I Need Tea
by BeatrixMcGuffrey
Summary: "Explain, as simply as possible."  Geneva scratched thoughtfully at the back of her head. "Think, 'X-men'."  The girls looked at each other, then back to the picture, both tilting their heads and squinting. "That's pretty simple."
1. In which fries substitute therapy

Dear reader: This particular section of the story is not entirely necessary. No. However, it might give a better sense of character to start out with and explain the style in which the rest of the story is told.

**Disclaimer: **_I Do not now, nor have I ever owned TMNT or any of its affiliated characters. I DO own Geneva, Elena, and Jennifer._

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><p><strong>Prologue – in which fries substitute therapy.<strong>

"I'm not sure I understand…" A tall blond across the table shifted to accommodate the girl sliding into the booth next to her.

"I'm having a crisis, Jenn. In fact, it's kind of a ginormous crisis and I'm just this side of a non-reversible panic attack."

The blond nodded around her ice cream. "Alright, Neeves, alright. What is this 'crisis'?"

There was silence. At a Meeting of the Minds this was unusual enough to be shocking. The other girl gave herapparently crisis-riddled friend a long stare.

"Neeves? You're not kidding, are you?"

"No, 'Lena. I…I'm married."

All available oxygen in the immediate vicinity found two sets of lungs to inhabit, and the room's gasp-o-meter blew a fuse.

"You're—" Elena paused to choke on her breadstick. "You're married?"

"Yah."

"Wait, you…seriously? We weren't invited?"

"I know, Jennifer, and I really, really, really, really reallyreallyreallyreally…"

"Ok, assuming you wanted us to be there…"

"Urm, yes, assuming. I was in New York at the time."

"You got married-"

"Yes, I did."

"In New York-"

"Correct."

"To who?"

The redhead coughed. "I think you mean 'to whom'."

"I think I mean 'I'm going to kill you'."

"Right. Here's the thing, I haven't told my mom yet."

A low whistle erupted from the small audience followed by the smell of smoke as mental gears began to grind. Well-remembered pictures of a lovely, diplomat's wife and a brilliant cook, were quickly replaced by vaguer memories of a short, angry, Irish woman. Geneva's mum sweeping in to exact vengeance. All three girls attempted to sink further into the booth's seats.

"Dude, I love your mom…but…she's going to kill you."

"It's worse than that, she's going to be _disappointed._"

A sharp intake of breath.

"Yeah. That's worse. But if she's only _disappointed_ you might end the meeting with your spleen still attached…pass me another breadstick."

Jennifer threw out a line in the hopes of resolving the situation.

"How long ago was this?"

Geneva swallowed. "About seven months ago."

Half of a breadstick found its way across the table, the other half apparently lodged in Elena's windpipe.

"Neeves…"

"I know. But it gets worse…"

"How?"

"Weeeeell, you know I'm working with TESOL in L.A., right?"

"Teaching English, yeah, I know."

"My boss doesn't know."

This took a moment to register, but Geneva's audience was catching up quickly. She almost wished they weren't. Trust her to have the only friends in the entire world who could believe something like this. But conclusions must be reached by proper routes.

"Your boss doesn't know that you're married?"

"Urm, no. Also, he kind of has a gigantic crush on me."

Elena and Jennifer slapped available spaces of forehead before calling the waitress over.

"Well take tea."

"Yes, a lot of tea."

"But we'll start with one pot. As hot as is humanly possible."

As the waitress bustled off Jennifer tried to frown and failed miserably. She was much too curious at this point to be displeased.

"Try again. More concise this time."

"Righto. So, to recap, I'm married, and my mother doesn't know, and my boss doesn't know, so the head of the school where I work now has a crush on a married woman, and…"

The two-girl audience leaned forward.

"…And?"

"And my husband can't leave New York. And I'm stuck here for the next nine months, you know, until the end of the course."

"He can't leave New York? Why not?"

An expression, clearly born out of deep, murky reserves was finding its way across the redhead's face. It was not a pleasant expression and did, in fact, make her look entirely unattractive, pulling at all the wrong muscle groups around her face. Considering the circumstances, her audience thought maybe now was a bad moment to mention this. It was something between confusion, frustration, a deep desire to lie and a natural inability to do so.

"Pikes' Peak."

"What the hell are you talking about, Jenna?"

"It's a mountain out east, sits right on the corners of, like, five states or something." She pointed to the redhead's face. "Neeves's expression."

"Ah…yeah, I can see it."

"I look like a mountain?"

"Explain your man's issue first, then we'll talk metaphors."

Geneva hesitated, squirming in her seat.

"He's…physiologically interesting…"

"He _looks_ weird?"

A long, slow nod, and then an interesting eyebrow issue. Geneva was trying to work her way around this and it was getting more difficult.

"Do you have a picture?"

She went a bit whiter than usual, her freckles standing out in patterns.

"Um, yes."

"Well, let's see."

A backpack was opened, and after digging through two folders of homework to be graded and a series of notes on P.G. Wodehouse, an envelope was produced and handed over. Geneva nearly threw herself into the plate in front of her, making violent work of the burger and muttering something about wishing she had avocado to put on it.

"So, what's with the costume?"

The burger paused on its way to the redhead's mouth and she looked up pleadingly.

"It…isn't…a costume…"

The silence stretched thin, and kept stretching, while Geneva's burger and fries were disappearing as fast as they could be brought to her mouth, clearly attempting to keep words from spilling out all on their own. When was that blasted tea going to arrive?

"Geneva Rose Rockeman."

There was nothing for it. She winced and cleared her throat.

"…yes?"

"You married a giant TURTLE!"

"Yes. Yes, I did."

The deepest nature of the crisis was making a wide, deep, meandering track through the consciousness of Geneva's friends.

"…Your mother, and your boss, have no idea that you're married to a giant turtle."

Her audience tried to wrap their minds around this.

"The other turtles here are…"

"My brothers-in-law."

"The…fuzzy thing?"

"My father-in-law. He's a rat."

Another long pause before Jennifer leaned forward, her eyes as wide as Geneva had ever seen them and her nose doing that stress thing where it bent downward at the end. Geneva panicked and swallowed a quarter pound of food in one go.

"Explain. As simply as possible."

"Think X-men."

The girls looked at each other, then back to the picture, both tilting their heads and squinting a bit.

"That's pretty simple."

"Yah."

Elena spoke this time, hands moving as though she was trying to shape the thought properly in mid-air but was unsure as to specific desired outcome.

"So, he's…Sentient, like, human, only he _looks_ different."

A hurried nod with eyes the size of light bulbs.

"Yes! Exactly."

"X-men, huh? Why didn't you pick Wolverine, or whatsisface, the one with the wings?"

Geneva nodded. "Archangel. They were fresh out."

"Right. So, you got a Turtle."

"It's a really long story."

"Look, Neeves, I think you should tell us everything, from the beginning."

"Yes, don't leave anything out. How did this happen?"

Geneva slouched as far down as she could in the booth, breathing deeply and bringing her plate to rest on top of her boobs. This was going to take a lot more fries.

"Right…well… I was at my cousin's house…"

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><p>Soooo - yes. Proper chapter 1 will be up soon-soon.<p> 


	2. In which are footsteps and a safetypin

Hullo Again! I know this one is going to take a little while to get up and running, but once it is, _te prometo_, It'll sprint! But anyway, this is the first meeting between the girl and one of our boys. How does it go?

~Shout Outs~

**Mikell: **I have to say, when I saw you had reviewed my story, and in such detail, I was totally star-struck! I don't know if I've ever properly reviewed your fics (shame on me!) but I've read a lot of them and absolutely LOVE them! Never fear, brilliant one, for I totally know what you mean about romances and the sweeter parts of this story are going to be dyed-in-the-wool Love-based. And…yes…I was totally thinking about that episode too… ^_^

**Scotia60: ** *grins* Why, thank you! I hope to keep you interested. If it starts boring you, just give me a kick and I'll see what I can do.

**The Silent Hunter:** Now you've made me nervous… : ) This chapter isn't as chatty, sadly, but the light tone will come in and out. I hope I can do it justice. My plans for it right now are pretty complicated…

**Btch:** All in good time, my dear. All in good time… *Evil Laughs*

**Disclaimer: **_Yes, thank you, I KNOW, I don't own TMNT or any of its affiliated characters. No need to rub it in. I __**do **__own Geneva Rockeman, however._

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><p>Chapter 1 – in which there are footsteps and a safety pin<p>

My feet ached, my arms burned, and I was convinced that my brain was bleeding. The first two were just because I had walked about 20 blocks today with a very heavy bag and the last was because I had completed my first day of work at Stalton and Branning English Academy. But worse things had befallen me post-classroom (if that could be believed) and I was currently cursing every individual, whether real or imagined, involved in the realtor business. Even extended relatives. The fellow today, for example, had sown within me a distaste deep enough that if I met an estranged aunt of his I would have several, unhappy, somethings to say.

Lucky for me, my cousin was all types of sympathetic. She even provided drinks.

"It was a stupid time to go." I told April, taking a deep pull of my beer. "I was exhausted, and the realtor kept giving me these _looks_, you know, because I had a safety pin through my nose, which wasn't my fault because my boss doesn't like my face holes and I can't find a proper spacer. And my brain was completely fried. I spent most of the afternoon forcing myself not to correct his pronunciation."

"Really? Where was he from?"

"Here."

April laughed, all her pretty teeth showing up to congratulate me. Even in my current state I liked that I was making my cousin laugh. She was one of those people I truly admired and respected. I loved my whole family, of course, but April had an impressively low number of character flaws, while mine had recently gone up to fourteen when I added 'suspicious' to the list.

"Don't worry, Geneva, you'll find a place to stay."

"Maybe, cousin'o'mine, maybe, but I don't think I'll find what I want."

My cousin shrugged mildly and stood up to pour herself more coffee.

"What _do _you want? A pretty, one room apartment, all to your-"

"AHA! False!" I pounded the table before remembering that I was nursing a nasty headache. "What I _want_ is someplace unbreakable, unstainable, unburnable, noise-proofed, awash with bachelor-type-things and close to the subway."

April's eyes narrowed, one eyebrow stretching nearly all the way to her hairline. She hesitated.

"Why boys?"

At least she knew me better than to ask about the other five requirements.

"Because I don't like living alone, but I'm sick of being followed around by some princess complaining that I haven't bleached the tile grout."

This was no secret to my cousin. I was currently cleaning up regularly and behaving myself because I didn't want to overstay my welcome before I had found someplace to live. April knew, though, if left to my own devices I would leave a trail of papers, wear my pajamas all the time, eat cereal for lunch and watch Buffy marathons. My past three roommates had been so oversensitive they were treated for external nervous systems. I think I drove the last one to drink.

"Don't worry. You'll find a place."

"Your confidence is overwhelming."

April had laughed and ruffled my hair, absolutely unperturbed. I didn't really think she was right, honestly, but something about her attitude struck me and as I stretched my sore self out on the couch that night I tried to feel the edges of a positive vibe. Hard to do with a headache.

I _would_ live somewhere unbreakable and comfortable. I _would_ have decent roommates. The neighbors wouldn't decide they hated me…

I passed out pretty quick.

But there's this thing about footsteps. I'm easy enough to sneak up on, mostly because I'm not very observant or aware in general, but the little imp in the back of my brain, filing papers and playing scrabble with himself, was doing its job for a change. In my _sleep_, I heard footsteps and the sound filtered into my overused brain, sending out alerts.

It was impossibly soft, shuffled _tup-tup-tup_s on the floor, but the boards were creaking in a way they never did for April or Casey. Long-unused synapses exploded in alarm and I shot up out of a sound sleep, shock literally propelling me vertical.

Then, of course, I wanted to shoot somebody. I stared at the old clock on the table and squinted a bit. Past three in the morning, and now I was Awake, you know, the type with the capital letter in front, but I was still pretty blurry and couldn't hear anything except the fridge humming. I had to go back to work in four hours.

Tea. Tea would be good.

I staggered to my feet, the rush of blood making my ears ring, and I swayed a moment before making my way to the kitchen, trying to remember where April kept the teapot, and the cups…and the tea bags…and the spoons…and the sugar. After a determined remembering of the apartment's layout, I felt the kitchen under my bare feet, cool linoleum giving me a point of reference. I blinked slowly, still struggling to see anything in the dark, fumbling along the wall for the light switch before I found it and gave it a flick.

…

It was eating a sandwich.

I'm not sure why that was my first thought. It probably should have been 'there's a monster', or 'It's a giant Turtle', or 'it's bleeding everywhere'.

But it was eating a sandwich. I think my brain took in the rest of it and found them working together in a fairly well-organized capacity, but the sandwich had snagged something.

_One of these things is not like the other…dum-dumdumdum-dum-dum_

And the expression on its face, the sandwich hanging mid-air, dripping mustard and ready to lose a couple of pickles off one side; it looked _shocked._

So I turned the light off.

This was the sort of thing that a person couldn't handle until they had slept properly and been brought round at a decent hour by somebody with a plate of sausages and a large mug of very strong coffee. I found my way back to the couch and slept the deep, blessed sleep of the saint-like.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Michelangelo Hamato liked to tell himself things.

Some of it was notes, like 'to do' lists, although his were quite different than those his brothers would write out. His 'to do' list generally included things like hiding Leo's Katanas, gluing Christmas novelty socks to the battle shell and making a five-gallon bucket full of play-doh. Alternatively, there were a lot of other things that Michelangelo found important to tell himself. Some of them were almost like mantras, spoken in deeper, more orange-tinted recesses of the mind while he and his brothers performed their bows and prostrations for Splinter before early morning practice

_Good morning Mikey!_

_Have fun today._

_If you start getting bored – fix it._

But there was another, incredibly important classification of things Mikey had to tell himself. The thoughts that were filed under 'This Never Actually Happened'.

As far as Mikey could figure, if he told himself that something hadn't happened for just long enough then he might actually believe it. His innocent face wouldn't have to be an act, in those cases. Say, for instance, that Donnie walked up and asked if Mikey had fed a large amount of medicinal nanobots to a pig that was now going to live a very long, healthy, interesting life despite all the contrary intentions of its owner. Mikey could look his brother in the eye with a clear conscience, open his mouth, and in absolute truth (at least, truth according to the primary functions of his Dorsolateral Prefrontal, Entorhinal Cortex and Hippocampus areas of the brain) provide the best possible response.

"What?"

"Oh, never mind."

And he was off the hook.

Last night, as another, possibly better example, never happened.

He wasn't supposed to be above ground, for one thing, following that business on St. Patrick's day, and he was most certainly _not_ supposed to be above ground, by himself, for seven hours at a time, following a 'mysterious van-thingy' just because its driver looked like a creep. There was something else going on, Mikey knew. It was connected.

Donnie had said something once about fluid minds providing their own connections. Granted, it had been said after a long alien-movie marathon when Mikey could not be coaxed out from under the couch or convinced that there wasn't a grand plot directed at him personally, but Mikey remembered the phrase. His brain didn't work like Donnie's or Leo's, everything in order, numbered and catalogued, or like Raph's, white flashes of understanding over perpetual moves of emotion and decision. Mikey's brain just _went._ It would go from one thing to another, each and every one connected to the one before, focus and priority skipping around to accommodate. Mikey saw connections in things.

Not the crazy kind, of course. Not the _bad_ crazy kind.

But last night everything had felt so weird, watching the van park while its driver smoke a cigarette and talked to a couple girls. It was like there were threads everywhere, just waiting for him to pick one up and understand where it was going. Getting into a fight though, while trying to think about the cosmic connectivity of life, wasn't good for any attempt at focus, and numbers were numbers. He had survived the experience and broken a decent number of faces, but at the end of the fight Mikey had been bleeding, hungry, and very close to April's apartment. A sandwich just made sense.

At least, a sandwich _had _made sense until she walked in. Not April. This one looked vaguely similar, but a great deal shorter and rounder, with hair that had its own zip code. He froze, sandwich halfway to his mouth and brain shorting out, begging him to think of _something_ – he was a ninja, after all.

But the redhead had blinked slowly, her sleep-swollen eyes clearly taking him in before she shook her head, turned off the kitchen light and staggered back to the couch.

Mikey ate his sandwich on the way home, giving himself that lecture.

"This never actually happened."

He had been saying it all morning, too. And all through lunch. It was nearly working now, and the clock only read 5:00 PM.

"Mikey,"

"Yeah, Donnie?"

"Could you stay here and make dinner? Leo and Raph and I are headed to April's to help her move in the stuff from her storage unit. We should be back around eight."

This never actually happened.

"Sure thing, Donnie."

And if nothing had actually happened, then they _couldn't_ be surprised by anything.

"Try not to burn the dinner, Mikey."

Or anyone.

"Bye Mikey!"

Could they?

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><p>AN: oooooh, dear! Mikey, what is _wrong_ with you? Little scamp.


	3. In Which Rain Facilitates Housing

Here is the next chapter! I'm getting closer to the good bits now, but this chapter has been giving me all kinds of issues. I think I re-wrote it three completely separate times. It was too silly and then too serious, and then there wasn't enough of the boys in it, and we cannot put up with that. The worst problem, however, is that Donnie's been reaching across the desk and poking me in the ribs with his bo staff. I tried threatening him with teaching a beginner's computer class but he didn't take me seriously.

Anyway, here we goes!

**Shout Outs:**

**The Silent Hunter: ** I'm _so_ glad you liked the meeting! I spent a nice, long while trying to decide how the first encounter would go and I liked this one so much – it's nice to know you liked it.

**MelodyWinters: **A hugely encouraging message for me – you have no idea. I like to fiddle with words, but I've had more professors than I can count who always rave at me to cut out the 'dead weight'. I like your opinion much better. *^_^*

**Scotia60: **Yes! Her turning the light off was one thing I couldn't possibly change – I liked it too much!

**Mikell: **Fear not, fair one, there will be _no_ avenging angels. I know plenty of people in my own life (my lovely cousin and model included) who manage to get through life just peachy without terrible things happening to them. I consider them a seriously underrepresented demographic in literature as a whole.

**Disclaimer: **I never have, do not currently, and probably won't ever own TMNT. This saddens me, but there you have it.

**And now, with no further ado, I present…**

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><p>Chapter 2 – In which Rain creates housing opportunities<p>

...

I'm not sure what made me go all quiet just there at the end of 14th and Anders, one block away from April's place. All the way there I could nearly have been described as 'carousing', which was nice. To be entirely honest, I was walking off the last of my drink, my head getting to the last stage of clarity – sort of like watching custard being made backwards. It starts out all thick and spoony and ends up thin, just milk and powder and eggs and melted chocolate.

I didn't even bother feeling guilty about it, because I was feeling much better. Around seven this morning everything seemed to have gone wahoony-shaped. I had woken up late, my eyelids feeling like they had recently become the proud owners of a sandpaper shop, and by the time I had stumbled into something that looked sort of like a subway car the acute absence of my backpack hit me and I had to go back.

After three transfers, actually hitching a ride on the back of a pickup, and running for two blocks in spike heels I stumbled into my classroom just as the last bell rang.

For a second I considered trying to look busy, important, and in charge, a sort of 'fashionably late' entrance, but chucked the idea at the last second. There was no way I could pull it off. For one, my hair looked like I had attacked it with a cake mixer (more than usual, anyway), and for two, I don't do haughty well. It just gets tangled up in ego and takes my dignity tits-over-teakettle. I know this, so I did what comes much more naturally for me: harried and disorganized.

My students appreciated it for the most part – at least they understood it. Juan Fernando Del Valle, the kid from El Salvador who sat in the front row and generally exuded puckishness, thought it was pretty funny.

"_Profesora,_ you were up very late last night?"

I rolled my eyes and tried to find today's lesson plan…underneath the 'Tulip Tint' takeout menu? I don't even eat Vegan Yeast Bowl for $6.50. Ewww. Throw _that _away.

"Nobody, Juanfer, and I went to bed at ten."

"Nobody was with you?"

Wow. I didn't even know eyebrows could _do_ that. He was also winking. Wasn't this kid, like, sixteen?

"I don't have a boyfriend."

"You don't have a _Novio_, miss?"

I tried not to be flattered by the surprise in his voice and leveled my tone further.

"Nope."

There was a slight pause and a look of sharp concentration slipped across the young man's bright face before he grinned, all twinkles.

"Pull the other one. It has bells on it."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. All day yesterday had been spent on the explanation of English Idioms, in concept. It was difficult subject in any language and my entire classroom had dissolved into either near-tears levels of frustration or disgusted disinterest, but Juanfer, apparently, had gotten _something_. I was impossibly proud. I gave him a gold star.

The staff meeting, of course, was another matter.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

As far as the Turtles were concerned, 'helping April' was an excuse for a visit. It always had been, just like her deciding to help them with some small task and sticking around for hours afterwards to put tomorrow's lunch in the crock pot, or sweep up Master Splinter's room, or push Donatello off to bed before he could catch his midnight stride. After ten years of friendship some things were simply a slow, comfortable sort of certainty. Donnie knew they wouldn't be back a minute before eight o'clock, just like he told Mikey, but he also knew that moving two standing lamps, a vanity, eleven hat boxes, and a hope chest full of gloves would not take three hours. It might take fifteen minutes, with carting things to April's shop and making sure they got through the door unscratched (or, relatively unscratched in the case of the vanity) but hot chocolate, and dessert, and sitting out a rainstorm would definitely take at least two and a half hours. Maybe three. And besides, this was important. They needed to talk.

"I just don't understand what's going on," Donatello moaned, pretending to stir the hot chocolate while willing it to heat up faster. "It all feels connected – I mean, Mikey said it was, but it's always been hard to take him seriously."

"But you agree…" April supplied, gently pushing Donnie toward the table and stirring the pot properly. It wasn't a question, simply the next step she knew Donnie's brain had gone. Long friendships did this to people, made them catch on quickly.

"Yes." He looked hesitant, opened his mouth like he was about to speak, and then seemed to think better of it. Raphael coughed.

"Donnie first thought Mikey was goin' crazy."

"I did too." Leo added. "But it _is_ looking strange."

Just wait, April knew, and they would leak information like a cheap diaper. The leaking, that was, not the information.

"It's all legal—"

"It _looks_ like it's _mostly_ legal." Raphael cut in, his general talent for speaking in italics stretching itself as he gave Donatello a sharp look. "The only illegal parts we can _see_ are the drugs."

"Wait…what in the world are you guys talking about?"

The clamor was immediate and nearly deafening.

"The Purple Dragons!"

"The Foot, and the Downtowners…"

"The Irish and the Italians, and now the Triads are making—"

"We just can't see what—"

"But it's all at the same time, and _everywhere_, but I just can't figure out…"

"Wait, just one minute! I can't understand anything if you all yell at once." April eyed them, stern and demanding. "Now, in a very, very small nutshell, what seems to be the problem?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

As a rule, I hated people making fun of accents in English. I grew up around ESL students and I was usually the only white girl in attendance, so when anyone starts making fun because a foreigner can't pronounce something properly, or they begin to pointlessly argue semantics, my primary response is to leave their company and never seek it again. It's like listening to bigoted drivel, only worse, because this fresh type of idiot thinks their being _really_ educated and clever. And English is a hard language, taking, for example, the issue of 'dough'. How many other words does that look like?

"It's pronounced 'doe', not 'duff'…"

Ha. Ha. Snicker. Snicker. Asshole.

This all to say, as I sat lower and lower in my chair, I was shocked by my sudden, violent, immature desire to make fun of every single word coming out of my boss' mouth. Every word. But, I paused a moment to forgive myself. I didn't want to make fun of my boss because his accent was a little bit sketchy, I wanted to make fun of him because he was a world class Stain on the Pants of Life.

His sick obsession with staff meetings was beginning to look like a serious drawback in this job, even considering the pay, which was a mite nicer than what I got working for the pipeline. I had encountered this feeling before with Dragon Mistress of Greasy Spoon Diner, where life sort of condenses and you feel like having yourself run over by a riding mower so you can get out of going to work. It's not a good sign.

My boss talked about work sheets…

And every second was getting worse. It wasn't just raining, which was fabulous, it was raining and _hot_, just like back home, and it was making me go all funny and fuzzy and soppy…itchy. Although that last one was probably the nylons. Nasty things. It was the same feeling I got during full moons, wanting to start a fight with somebody bigger than me, say all the mean things I thought, laugh at everything and kick things around just because I could.

My boss brought up the issue of students memorizing vocabulary lists and the benefits of repetitive…

Whatever made me think I could be an adult? I mean, I was turning twenty-four in four months and half the time I felt like a teenager.

We were dismissed.

Thank God. I ran to change my clothes and called to cancel my meeting with the realtor – it was the only decent thing to do. If I had to listen to that putz this afternoon he'd probably be heading back home by six o'clock with half a kidney left, and I doubted the gallant police officers of New York City took kindly to that sort of thing.

And, tasting rain, feeling it drip into my ungodly-bright sneakers, and just waiting for something to break, I poured myself into a promising sort of establishment. Culluhann's. Promising.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Leo picked up the thread now, looking harried. More harried than usual, anyway.

"Everything is going well, for everyone. The whole city seems to be getting richer."

"Why is that a bad thing?"

"Half the world is in a serious recession and this port city, a trade capital, has seen improvement. It's suspicious."

Something waved a flag in the back of April's brain and she tried to voice it.

"But…you're saying this boom has something to do with the city's organized crime."

Raphael snorted, his usual signal of derision. "Don't sound so surprised, April. You know Karai still has, like, most of Shredder's old business empire, right? That's gotta be at least one percent of the city's money right there."

That didn't sound right at all.

"Just one percent? That doesn't sound like much…Raph…? "

Leo made a face and Donnie smiled wryly. "Fun Fact: as of last week Raph seems to have a natural aptitude for economics."

OK. That was more than a little weird. April tried to put her finger on the exact nature of the oddity. "But you hate math." Not precisely what she was trying to get at, but it was close enough.

"Economics isn't _real_ math," Raph growled into his hot chocolate. "It's like knowing what the next hit's going to be in a fight. One guy's going at 'cha and -_wham_- you take him in the throat, slice out the bigger tendon in his upper right arm, kick out his knees, smack him on the back of the head, and he goes down -_bam-_ so he's out for at least two months before he can fight again and you can get at the next scuz-bucket."

"Thanks, Raph. That was…graphic." April thought a moment. "It also makes a lot of sense. So, deciding to take down a Foot operation instead of a slightly larger Purple Dragons operation…"

"Calculating Opportunity Cost." Raphael grinned and pulled the bowl of popcorn toward him. "Easy. Next question."

"I still don't get why one percent of the city's money is such a big deal."

"Look April, out of eight million people in New York City Karai and the foot control one percent of all the money. Braniac over there told me it was the same as average salary for more than 80,000 people."

That certainly made more sense and made the number seem a great deal bigger. The same money as 80,000 people. Was that the same as control over 80,000 people? How many non-foot were employed by Karai's business front anyway? Raph had hit his stride thought, and didn't wait for April's thought train to hit the station.

"Anyway, we've been trying to look at territory and so far all we can see is when the gang is getting rich, it's sort of matching how rich the area is."

"But doesn't that always happen?" April asked, pouring more cocoa into the available mugs.

"Naw, look, we're talkin' _how_ rich, and _where_ the territories are. Things are exploding, right and left, hotels and restaurants are doing piles of business, and there hasn't been so much as a turf scrap in over two weeks."

"That was what made me agree with Raph, something's definitely going on." Leonardo intoned, pulling the skin off his cocoa with a suspicious expression. He never did trust milk skin.

"What worries me is where the money came from and where it's going to." Donnie said, lowering himself into a kitchen chair.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Mr. Malloy (65 years young) and Mr. Doyle (Old-Enough-To-Be-My-Grandfather) leaned on each other, laughing, while I played my voicemail again on speaker.

"…_I've been looking through this complex in Queens, just foah yoo, sweetie, and I think…"_

The Realtor had called me at lunch and I'd ignored the call, an indifferent gesture that had produced _this_, a treasure in the land of boring voicemailality…voicemailishness…voicemailest…I signaled the bartender for another beer.

"_The rent's a little higheh than I know you was lookin' foah, but…_"

The realtor had recently insisted on declaring to landlords that my housing budget was at least two-hundred dollars higher than it was. Yesterday I had to correct him four times and each time he looked like I'd given him the exact date for the world's end.

"…_and Mr. Ollivah says the wallpaper looks like it's moving sometimes, but that's just a ventilation and totally solved termite problem, nothing to be worried about…"_

But now, it just seemed too removed to be annoying. I laughed so hard I cried and found myself wiping my eyes on the sleeve of Mr. Malloy's jacket while he was slapping the bar and wheezing, trying to remember what breathing was supposed to feel like in between girl-giggles.

"_I've also found you a possible roommate. She says her name is Marianne Fontaine and she's an interior decorator. She's a neat little pin, so…_"

Another explosion and Mr. Doyle slapped a twenty on the bar.

"Lass!" He declared, his gestures magnanimous enough that I had to hold onto my beer just in case. "I'm buying! I haven't had such fun in ages."

"You are a scholar and a gentleman." I informed him, slapping him on the back, my heart feeling the twinge of the truly touched and grateful. "BARKEEP!"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

April was impressed. It wasn't often anybody got to hear Raphael being serious, and even less usual was his apparent grasp of a math-based subject. Not that Raphael was stupid, of course, but he hadn't changed a great deal since April had first met him and it was hard to connect the coarse, moody young man with a picture of him, pencil in hand, bending studiously over a piece of paper covered with small graphs and hypothetical figures.

But matters were demanding an analytical mind. If the boys had come to her to talk then she'd better keep talking.

"So, what makes you think this is all connected? Couldn't they just be focusing on not letting the bank run dry, so to speak?"

"Well, see, that's the biggest problem…"

Leo rolled his eyes.

"What it means, April, is that we can't prove they _are_ connected. In order to make sure we'd have to set up surveillance we don't have the money for."

That couldn't be right. April turned to Donnie.

"But you just got another royalty check. I brought it down myself…" Suspicion was beginning to grow, especially with the sight of Donnie's cheeks turning a darker shade.

"I blew out a giant hole in the battle shell, one of my older computers died, and we had to buy groceries, and Klunk got sick and Mikey had Angel take him to the vet. I can't pull what I need out of the dump either, April. This type of watch is going to take a week to _set up_, never mind everything else. I mean, it's not _all_ gone, but I need more to fill it out expenses..." He slumped further in his seat, sucking pathetically at the top of his cocoa. Donnie obviously 'didn't want to talk about it'.

"Well, how much do you need?"

April had three turtles nearly jump down her throat. An interesting concept to say the least.

"No, no! Not like that. I know you won't take my money." She managed to interject when the commotion had died down slightly. "I'm just wondering, so I know."

"About 600 dollars." Donatello admitted, looking miserable. "And that's just my first estimate."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"_And it's no, nay, never_

_No, nay, never, no more_

_Will I play the wild rover_

_No never, no more_ …"

Who the heck knew that there was actually a man under the age of thirty in New York City who knew how to play the accordion un-ironically? Who knew he'd be so pretty…

"_I've been a wild rover for many's a year_

_And I've spent all me money on whiskey and beer_

_But now I have treasure, I've gold in great store,_

_And I never will play the wild rover no more…"_

And they needed a tenor! I stayed just a half-hour longer to go above and beyond the Call of Duty but by the time I forced myself out the door with handshakes around I couldn't really stop singing. I lit a cigar and pivoted towards April's place, the warm, gold feeling pushing down my legs and into the pavement, washing down into puddles and storm drains with the rest of the day, all pretty and promising, planting seeds of my better moments to grow up all by themselves. It was going to be beautiful tomorrow.

"_I went to a tavern I used to frequent,_

_And I told the landlady my money was spent,_

_I asked her for credit, she answered me 'nay,_

_Such a custom as yours I can have any day'"_

The rain hadn't let up, a little slower but the rain drops were fatter, seeming to slap onto things instead of merely find their way towards pavement, and umbrellas and cars. They weren't polite rain drops. I grinned and sort of jigged my way down the next block.

"_And it's no, nay never…"_

The rain didn't stop and I caught up to the end of a fourth cigar before I found myself at April's back door, feeling…feeling…

Tired, finally, in the best way. Not thin and worn out, but heart-full, honestly hungry, and reasonable.

I snuffed out my cigar and slipped through the doorway. Falling prettily down the stairwell was the smell of popcorn, hot chocolate, and cookies, the store's cool, dry air touching dust and bouncing back softly, asking me to slip up the stairs and find the shower. Hopefully, April wouldn't ask questions until after dinner.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was the smell of wet smoke, like a badly banked fire, that hit Raphael first, then around the table like a wave, minds snapped out of elsewhere and into practical, heads turning to the top of the spiral staircase.

It may be admitted that there are young ladies the world over who look the better for a quick dousing. They meet the vital stuff and emerge looking sort of fresh, daring, and rather striking in clinging, light-colored blouses. It may also be admitted that Geneva Rockeman was _not_ one of these girls. Currently forming her own small puddle on the floor of the living room she really looked more like a half-drowned cat than anything else, the long strands of hair plastered to her face and a damp cigar sticking out of her mouth renewing April's deeply unappealing memories of Pirate Week during her junior year in college.

She pulled a section of hair out of her eyes and took a quick scan of the room, blinking carefully a few times. She looked...unsurprised, blue eyes examining, calculating, and accepting.

"Hi," She managed, finally, talking around her cigar and shifting into a look of bright curiosity. "Howzit?"

The company at the table sat frozen for a moment, horror and surprise competing for attention before one puzzle piece and then another slowly fell into place. Donnie raised a hand and waved weakly before Leo slapped it out of sight.

She was sort of short, definitely not small, but just barely under expectation, Raph thought. A little chubby, though it was rather hard to call it that, as she just seemed to be sort of rounded on all ends. Sturdy, perhaps, was a better word, but there was also no evidence of muscle on the legs extending out of the dripping shorts, or under the loose tank top now soaked and plastered onto a well-fed figure. She was covered with freckles too, smaller eyes, blue, and turned down at the corners, and a normal sort of mouth.

"Cousin'o'mine?"

The room shifted, realizing the passage of time and trying to decide. Raphael gave his brothers a look and shrugged. Whatever this girl was, she certainly wasn't threatening.

"Why aren't you with the realtor?" April finally managed to ask, doing a very bad job of remaining casual, and trying to construct a 'not really here' field around her friends using what she hoped were merely _untapped _psychic powers instead of non-existent ones, but her cousin didn't seem to notice.

"Urm…I cancelled the appointment."

"Why?"

Geneva scratched the back of her head pensively, trying to force cognitive response.

"It was raining? Also," She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. "I found somebody who deals in antique tankards."

April tried to suppress a laugh and gave up pretty quick.

"Anything else?"

Geneva looked downward, frowning, and hiccupped. "I lost a shoelace…"

There are moments of complete, unreasonable chance, ones in which you watch a bridge collapse under the weight of a bird, or find yourself eating an entire wheel of cheese. It's in these moments of absurd excess, in whatever form, that inspiration arrives to prod at the loosening places in your brain. Now that your madness has been discovered, it says, why not get creative? What could you possibly have to lose? April understood this concept (especially that business with the cheese) and so was not terribly surprised when she felt a small light switch on in her head and something started knitting itself into a sock of reason. It even had a pattern for the heel…

"Guys," April said finally, throwing an arm around her soaked cousin and giving them an unreasonably bright smile, "This is my cousin, Geneva."

An hesitant, disbelieving chorus of greeting arrived on time and April turned to her best friend, sparks flying between her green eyes.

"Donatello Hamato. I believe I've found you 700 dollars a month."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Whhooooboy. This one was a bit sticky, and long, but thanks for hanging in there. Next chap shall, hopefully, pour forth more readily. Waaahoooo…n'stuff…


	4. In Which Excuses Fail

**So, let me take this opportunity to say how horrifically sorry I am this took so long. I have a plethora of excuses, some of which are actually quite good, but I'll leave the excuses business to this chapter.**

**I have absolutely loved every single one of the reviews I got (seeing as how you were all so nice about it ^_^) and throw myself on your mercy for making you wait - if indeed you were waiting..**

**SHOUT OUTS:**

**Rachel McN: **Thank you for your approval of the OC! I totally know what you mean. It's hard to find OC's I like, and I really like Her. She doesn't irritate me and she hasn't been attacked and rescued ^_^

**Btch: **Sandwiches are a seriously underused literary tool that I was all-too-pleased to incorporate into this little story : ) I'm glad you like it.

**Latina shewolf: **I hope to keep up a relative level of not-sucking ; )

**The Silent Hunter: ** Understanding one's own mental limits is something Mikey needs to work on ^_^ ... and how we LOVE him for it! And I really wanted her to be cheerfully undignified, hope I succeeded.

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own TMNT, Gretchen, the Discworld, Warhammer 40K, Star Wars, Buffy, or any fanfictions I have never read but may have inadvertently referenced. L-space is not mine. I also do NOT own a large chocolate eclair, but hope to rectify this state of affairs very soon. I do own Maureen and Jessica and, of course, Geneva.**

* * *

><p>Chapter 3 - In Which Excuses Fail and Leo Waves a Ham Sandwich<p>

"This is a tremendously stupid idea."

It was a Declaration, the type were you have to pronounce the capital 'D', and one of those in which her cousin so frequently indulged, but something about this one seemed odd. April stood back and considered her response options.

"Doesn't tremendous mean…"

Her cousin quickly dismissed this option.

"The word Tremendous has adopted the positive connotation but actually means 'enormous' and/or something inspiring awe and nervousness or anticipation. Original connotation closer to the negative…"

April rolled her eyes.

"And you say _I'm_ a geek."

"Your mom says…shut up..."

April decided not to respond to that one, and began to look for the tape dispenser. Damn thing was trying to run away again, reminding her of at least more three reasons not to leave inanimate objects next to a statue that exists on four separate inter-dimensional levels. Also books. Books did that a lot. The more she collected the more seemed to simply appear, or squeeze themselves into smaller and smaller spaces, or taking up more room than they should. Her uncle had often mentioned this phenomenon, something about L-Space, but it sounded a bit sketchy.

"I mean, they're a _family_,"

And, apparently, her cousin wasn't going to stop discussing the issue. April sighed and picked her way towards another box of books and movies, determined to be relatively silent until Geneva was finished protesting.

"It's not a real apartment. It's more like a homestay, and what if my showing up makes it all awkward? Pass me the giraffe."

"The what?"

Her cousin sighed and pointed to the corner of the small space. "The giant, hand carved, wooden giraffe right there."

"That thing is…ugly."

"Hey! I've had him since I was eight years old. Show some respect for poor George."

April kept her opinions of enormous statues to herself and looked around for something else to pack. The storage unit was looking a great deal worse than usual, admittedly, and she tried to visualize it empty of her cousin's belongings. After a moment of intense concentration it appeared to have worked and April set about throwing things into boxes much more cheerfully. She would miss having her cousin about in the evenings, of course, but dealing with Casey day after day and the turtles at all in-between times was quite enough for anybody. Also, it was worth mentioning that her cousin wasn't exactly the last word in ladylike restraint. Yesterday, for example, Casey had drawn in a breath that must have reached the deepest corners of his massive chest and belched so the windows nearly rattled. Instead of being disgusted, vaguely offended, or even mildly irritated, Geneva had laughed and applauded.

"Encore! Encore! Can you do the alphabet?"

As many a wise man has remarked upon well-met events: It Was Time. In the cosmic sense. Geneva might have a doubt or two to the nth power (for a given value of two, give or take an nth) but the longer this discussion wound around itself the fewer worries April found worthy of comment. A couple of days ago this idea had been more of a vague, bizarre, inspired impulse, but as April and Geneva worked their way through packing and Casey rounded up a van April began to find fewer and fewer legitimate excuses against the arrangement. Her cousin was clearly less convinced.

"Besides, when you and I were arranging things with Donnie, you know, about rent and everything, I kept looking over at Leo…" Geneva grimaced and shoved another teddy bear next to a pile of brightly printed cloth. April nodded.

"The Intense Look. He does that."

"He looked like Wo Fat in 'The Last Samurai', but, you know, less charming."

It was a fairly accurate comparison and April didn't feel bad for laughing.

"But just as bald? Don't worry about him. Leo _is_ pretty intense, but he's a good guy."

Geneva raised an eyebrow and started to dig through yet another box labeled 'misc.'

"I notice you didn't say 'cuddly' or 'adorable' or 'swee—Hey! Look, my Warhammer 40K poster!"

It didn't take much thought to realize that Geneva would benefit from relocation, April knew, and the primary supporting evidence at this moment was the internally generated Geek Field. Already, after only two weeks of living out of a single suitcase and sleeping on April's couch there were frightening exhibits of her cousin's influence. It had been hard enough for April to finally arrive at some approximation of mature residence in her apartment and the antique shop, especially with the Turtles coming in and out (she had long-since decided to mentally override all memories of that fire, and the other disaster, and the rest of…anyway, the shop was still standing). When Casey had moved in, for instance, April became the best customer of that strange little stall in central park known for selling only double-sided sticky coasters and the semi-homeless guy three benches down who continued to declare the sale of crazy glue as his primary source of income. It had been (and still was, sometimes) uphill work, but before too long April had managed to arrange a real life home for herself. The colors were right, the drapes were perfect, and every ornament she chose to bring up from the shop fit in exactly the right place.

"What if we don't get along? I mean, what if they don't like me? It happens, you know."

April nodded, attempting to rearrange her expression into something generous with possible veins of consolation. It was difficult.

"I'm sure it doesn't happen _that_ often."

Geneva needed to live with bachelors. She had be absolutely right about that. Recently, small things had been finding their way into April's life that she had not purchased, or vetted, or even knew what to do with. The original Star Wars Trilogy box set casually deposited on top of her TV had been followed by the Buffy DVD left in the player. A stack of Discworld books had appeared as if by magic next to April's collection of genetic science and robotics Academic Journals (what Geneva had since dubbed 'Isaac Asimov Weekly'), the t-shirts coming through the wash always seemed to find themselves on random pieces of furniture and just this morning, although April could not remember seeing it before in her life, a brightly colored comforter was spread across her 19th century, red velvet fainting couch, unfolded just enough to make the picture on one side visible. Where did a person even _buy_ a 'How to Train Your Dragon' blanket?

"But you said they did physical training for hours every day! Won't I be in their way?"

And the boxes and boxes of Count Chocula cereal, and the ring pop wrappers…

"Their dojo is separate from living quarters. You'll be fine."

At any rate, if anybody could take this sort of madness it was the Turtles. April wasn't sure she could make sense of it. She had always been, and still was, a very serious geek, but April had never been able to find a passion for any TV show, or comic book. Geneva's older sister, Maureen, and their mutual cousin Jessica, were all absolute hounds for this stuff, books and films and random pieces of merchandise. Jessica's veritable zoo of pets continued to grow with every new member named after a character in Lord of the Rings, and Maureen had a habit of wearing t-shirts declaring her involvement in the Zombie Defense Coalition. All three of them had tried to explain, at some point or another, the overlying concept of 'Fandom' but had lost April somewhere around 'Squee-Inducers 101'. The cousins had finally given up when April received a failing grade in 'Convention Etiquette'.

Their cousin Gretchen wasn't as crazy about the fandom thing, thankfully. It wasn't possible to share every single permutable gene sequence (except red hair, of course, which seemed to be unavoidable in this family) but even Gretchen would ditch her 300-level course Physics homework to play 'Left for Dead II' and 'Gears of War'.

Maybe she was the milkman's baby. April's mother had been brilliant, of course, but maybe there had been some wild fling with a stolid, practical, blue-collar fellow who just happened to have a milk-delivery route right past…

Oh, never mind.

"But if I'm coming and going all the time, won't that be dangerous for them?"

Only if she was leaking nitroglycerin, April thought dryly.

"Look, Geneva, you're getting an apartment in New York City for less than eight hundred dollars a month, utilities included, the best security system on the continent, and…"

The pause stretched out, April's face breaking into a smile as she returned an oddly-shaped umbrella to the last box.

"…And?" Her cousin finally prodded, "And what?"

The most important reason. April's grin spread further and she leaned down until she was nose-to-nose with her cousin.

"And I've been listening to you worry that this wasn't going to work, but not once have you mentioned the rather obvious fact that they're Giant Mutant Turtles."

The light of understanding clicked on somewhere behind Geneva's expression, her mouth falling into a rather ungraceful 'o' and her left eyebrow attempting something between a jig and the one-man-unicycle-fandango.

"…Aaaah. I see…"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"This is the worst idea _ever_!"

Hamato Michelangelo was being pointedly ignored, and he thought this was unfair.

Recently, somebody had told Mikey 'not to _wail_ like that ever again'. It had probably been Donnie. But even as Mikey disregarded the command he couldn't help feeling it was utterly necessary. His muscles held specific memories, fine-tuned, nearly perfected, and he lived by them. There were muscles that simply arranged themselves correctly to take his weight from a long fall, muscles that directed him out of easy firing range, muscles that dictated balance on barely existent surfaces, reacted by themselves to catch him on back handsprings, remembered how skateboarding _worked, _and all of the muscles that were involved in him eating. There were also a whole other set of muscle memories.

Poundings. Mostly by Raph. These were memories that his body took upon itself to avoid if at all possible. He shuddered. Self-preservation was making a serious bid for his attention. His spleen was begging to be defended.

"Come _on_, you guys, _renting out space_ in our _home_?"

Donnie sighed, his swivel chair squeaking as he turned to look at his little brother.

"First of all, Mikey enough with the italics. Second, it's not like we're offering advertising space on the north wall, we're just taking in a boarder."

"…for seven hundred dollars a month." Leo added around a bite of ham sandwich. "Donnie needs to set up security, remember? Master Splinter said it would be fine."

Mikey would not be deterred. The real problem was bubbling somewhere under the better parts of his brain (the parts that remembered cheat codes and super villains' real names). He had decided, after the ill-advised sandwich run the other night, that the girl seeing him Had Not Happened. The issue stood, of course, that he couldn't forget it properly if they kept talking about it, or if she was around, and if he couldn't forget it then any hope of innocent denial was impossible. He'd have to _explain things_. The muscle memory in charge of poundings twinged at him meaningfully and he pressed on.

"But she'll be in our way! We have training and—"

Raph grunted an unpleasant sort of half-laugh and Mikey took a step back, precaution taking up large areas of synapse relays.

"Unless you train out _here_, and not in the dojo, I'm not seein' how she'd be in your way."

This was not going well. There had been a time, oh so long ago, when Leo would've had to undergo hypnosis, three types of shock therapy, and be bribed with lots of expensive tea before he'd allow _anybody_ into the lair, least of all a human. Even allowing April to really be part of their lives had taken a lot of time, patience, a forty-two day probationary period that only Leo had actually known or cared about, and April simply being herself, which was quite a force, all told. Master Splinter had loved her right away, of course, but Master Splinter, despite occasional appearances, really _wanted_ to like people. It just made him happier if they really were likeable.

But now, some girl they didn't know was being taken in to rent a room, like they were bachelors in a condo with an empty room and in need of a few extra bucks. Granted, that was pretty much true, circumstantially, but this was about context, and living in the sewers with a bunch of mutant turtles and a giant rat was about as far from normal as a person could get.

"But if she's coming and going all the time, won't that be dangerous?"

Leo turned to look at him, curiosity flooding his face and replacing his general expression of Deep-Thought soup with a side of Intensity chips.

"For us or for her?"

Mikey considered this.

"Um…both?"

"Mikey, we've been living in the same place for more than ten years and we're _always _coming and going. If anybody was going to notice something, they would have noticed_ us_ a long time ago. I don't think one human is going to attract much attention."

A low grunt from Raph turned into something that sounded like 'famous last words'. Leo decided to ignore this.

"Look, April says she's ok. I trust April. I mean, we all trust April, and she can vouch for this girl…what's her name?"

"Geneva," Donnie supplied. "Like Switzerland."

"Right. She needs a place to stay, she can pay rent, and April says she's OK."

"But what about—"

"And, _unlike _Raph's last girlfriend, this girl has no ties to the criminal underworld, doesn't spend all her time trying to start fights andis not an emotionally crippled madwoman…" Donnie looked over his shoulder at the protesting Mikey, thinking back to the well-fed, drowned-housecat look. "So, eccentric at worst. Not likely to kill us in our sleep."

Raph's low growl rang along the brickwork and sent Klunk diving for cover underneath the couch. Mikey fervently wished he could follow suit.

"She was _not_ my girlfriend and that was a very long time—"

"You were pretty cuddly, as I recall, and wasn't she married to some foot ninja—"

"Shut _up_, Donnie."

This was not going well at all. Mikey's eyes flicked over the monitor in front of his brother and swallowed heavily. The outer door had just been opened.

"But we can't spend all our time watching out for her, right? And, if she wants to learn any—"

Leo held up a hand for silence. He had a genteel streak in him and with his turn of wrist it would have been quite a grand gesture, but the half-eaten ham sandwich was still in that hand and rather spoiled the effect.

"I already asked."

Mikey was impressed and said so, but Leo only rolled his eyes.

"Once bitten, twice shy, is all I'm going to say on _that _subject. April said she's just a teacher, not a fighter, and she's lived in big cities before."

"What does that mean?"

"It means she isn't stupid enough to walk through unlit back alleys." Donnie said.

Damn. Every excuse he could come up with, taken apart like a toaster on Donatello's desk, now lay utterly decimated and unusable. The screen showed the elevator was now heading down…

"But do we really want a girl down here? I mean, come on, Raph's girlfriend aside – "

"She was _not_—"

"Even when April stayed here it was tough. Do we really want another redhead wandering around down here, hanging up her underwear in the bathroom and making us eat our leafy greens?"

Mikey tried to feed a cheerful sort of commiseration into the last attempt and failed miserably. He felt cold sweat break out across the top of his head, then along his beak. He was going to be in so much trouble. The elevator doors were opening and the turtles could hear conversation echoing into the large, open space.

But all three of his brothers had stopped, mid-breath, and were staring at him. Leo, his voice lower and the Intensity Chips coming back, ventured their collective thought.

"We never said she was a redhead…"

Oh, shit.

Maybe if he started running now he could reach Mexico by Wednesday.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Thank you for reading! The action is about to pick up, trust us, and it won't be as long again before the next chapter, I assure you. Reviewers may or may not receive the mutant of their choice... ^_^**


	5. In Which Revolutions are Discussed

Ooook. So. I'm basically a horrible person and I don't deserve the air I breathe! I know I kept you all waiting so long, and I'm very, _very_ sorry about that. I actually do have a pretty good excuse, much of which involves moving and starting school and having to battle an army of ninja zombies, angry dwarf lobsters, and a skinny little kid with a butterfly knife by the name of Chuckwit O'Dole but I won't bore you with it.

Because I've been so slow in updating I will jump right to it. Right after Shoutouts… ^_^

**SHOUTOUTS:**

**Nothing new in this world: ** Even if it _is_ terribly delayed, I now stage my return! And thank you for the curiosity, it means I'm doing this decently.

**Alu In Chains: ** Creepy is NOT the word I would use! Flattering, certainly, and I don't feel like I deserve a good review after such a long time, but I hope you like this chapter anyway.

**Sasami1: **My deepest horror are bad OC's and sticky dialogue! You made me incredibly (and inordinately) proud of myself ^_^

**Amy Hamato: ** Be only patient and all things will be revealed to you… I swears it. Next absence will NOT be this long.

**Fire-fusion: **I attempt to keep things interesting. Here's hoping. This one's a little slower, but…

**SomebodyStandingThere: **I'm afraid you won't get quite the scene you hope for, but I think you might like this one anyway ^_^

**The Silent Hunter: **I know! I loved the sandwich bit. I could see it bumping around in my head and couldn't bear to leave it out.

**DISCLAIMER: **I do not own TMNT, more's the pity, nor does anybody take responsibility to Raphael's opinions and their respective expressions. He doesn't mean it, everybody, he's just a little tempestuous.

And now, with no more ado, here she is…

* * *

><p>Chapter 4 – In which Revolutions are discussed<p>

That was it. I had seen the enemy and, despite most relevant points of literary convention, it wasn't me.

Yea Ha Kim.

Fluffing, preening, poisonous, stuffed-bra, cheeky little _gong-ju_ (1). Every time she raised her hand all of my high school experience came back in violent, vivid color and I had to actively stifle the desire to chuck a very large textbook, a letter opener, and my spike heels at her. Deep breathing didn't really help.

"_Seongseng-nim,_" (2)

Holy love of cheese, I'd never heard an honorific sound so snotty before.

"Yes, Miss Kim?"

"Are we going to have any exams?"

There were a lot more extraneous vowels, of course, and sharp pauses, but it's hard to write those. The sentence would've looked like 'ahr-uh wi [glottal stop] koing-uh to [glottal stop] hab-e ayni exam-suh?'. But that was normal enough – I'd been picking through accents like that since eighth grade. No, what really caught me up on the sentence was all the _syrup _attached.

"No, Miss Kim. We discussed exams last month. This is Advanced English Conversation III. Your grade will rest on class participation."

A tough cultural concept, I knew. There was a kid from Sudan in the very back of the class who looked like he really wanted to cry. Too many educational systems relied on memorizing information and vomiting it back onto a test paper and, sadly for its students, this was _my_ English class and I didn't run things that way. Miss Kim did not appear to be impressed.

I didn't care much. I'd heard the teacher's mention her name in the staff room, mostly in awe. Apparently she'd been some sort of academic wunderkind, making _full_ marks on her graduating exams and receiving no less than seven references from her teachers before she was accepted into NYU on a full scholarship. I'd also heard a few things from the other girls…

Like how she made the underclassmen do her homework, or how she switched tests with some boy who had Asperger's, or how exactly she'd come by all those teacher references.

Even if none of it was true, Yea Ha Kim wouldn't be getting any tests to ace and hardly any homework to impress me with. Just good, old-fashioned conversation, and _somebody's _accent wasn't getting any better because _somebody _wasn't practicing outside of class (three guesses as to who that was, and the first two don't count). No surprises here: she didn't like me.

"_Si quieres un cien por ciento en este clase necesitas flirtear con la profesora…"_ (3)

I shot Juanfer a look and he just twinkled at me. 'Flirt with the teacher' indeed. What a little stinker.

But, apparently, the teacher of 'Level VI English Grammar' had believed it. He might have even been listening at the doorway, his ear all smushed around the keyhole. I was probably going to be careful opening the door from now on. Anyway, the Grammar Teacher sidled into my classroom about five minutes after the bell rang and just stood in front of my desk while I was occupied underneath it looking for my phone. At this point I would like to say that emerging from under a desk to find something like _him_ leering over it is not a pleasant experience. He's rather…greasy, and has this odd tendency to look as though he's expecting a kick and might enjoy it, you know, if _you_ give him one. He also walks around with his hands in his pockets all the time and breathes like he's been jogging.

He just stood there and _waited _until I said something.

"Urm, hullo Dennis?"

Not an impressive greeting, but I was trying to keep myself out of corners. 'How's it going' could be weird, and 'How are you doing' sounded like a very bad idea. 'What can I do for you' was simply out of the question.

He smiled. I think it was a smile anyway – his teeth were showing.

"Hiiii…"

Dennis also liked to breathe his sentences and oil them up on their way out. But he wasn't saying anything again. I started to pack things into my bag as quickly as I could without looking too desperate. Even creepoids have feelings…I think.

"How was class?"

That sounded safe enough, unless you considered that this man probably took this job because he'd be surrounded by Asian school girls. I tried not to think about it.

"It was…interesting. And speaking of interesting," He'd hit his conversational stride and I groaned inwardly, now throwing objects into my bag at random and hoping for escape.

Usually, people who possess the observational skills of a goldfish have some sense of how to approach the part of a conversation they want to be at. If you want to bring up the serious lack of coffee in the break room one would start with a light discussion on how good that one café down the block is. Yeah, they do amazing cappuccinos. I wish we had a coffee maker in the break room – I mean, it's no 'that one café down the block', but it would be rather nice, wouldn't it? Say, what's your favorite type of coffee?

Dennis, however, had never worked his way around that one. While I kept trying to avert my eyes from that god-awful sweater (I've never seen a color between puce and teal before, and can't describe it for the life of me) he came to his point rather violently, like he'd picked up word-rocks and was pelting me with them.

"And I know this great bar down the street! Youshouldcomewithme!"

For a second, a terrible, seemingly interminable second, horror kind of took over the primary logical processes of my brain, but while I fought for clarity I heard my subconscious respond on my behalf.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I wish I could – but I really have to get home."

It must've sounded completely normal.

But…I shook myself.

I had actually been planning on dropping by Culluhann's again, seeing the old boys for an hour or so before heading home.

_There it was again!_

I escaped unscathed, but I was feeling a little odd as I tried to decide what to think about it. About that word. It was easy enough to ignore serious thoughts, though, when I was nearing the end of my commute. Today was nasty hot, a proper August slice of summer, and every corner I turned seemed intent on showcasing a brand new smell, some combination of fresh sewer, rotting leaves, human evidence, and any special line of scent available. This included the less-than-appealing wares of that fruit vendor with the lazy eye, the pungent smell of Old Lady With Shopping Cart (I gave her a fiver), and the ever-growing pile of trash just past the graffiti of a naked woman. I had actually stopped to give that one a look over and finally decided that the artist must've been one of those 15-year-old horn dogs who's never seen a real naked woman. I pulled out a sharpie and edited bits.

But it was really _strange_. If I were to dip into the more poetic corners of my brain I suppose I'd say that what my eyes were seeing and what the rest of my body was deciding were two completely different things. My eyes were seeing all of my route home from work. The shoving into and out of the subway, pickpockets, unofficial trash depositories, and of course, the fruit vendor, the Shopping Cart Lady, and _Madame a la nude_ (now quite a bit chubbier in the middle). My eyes _saw_ all of that, took it in, recognized it, processed it, but halfway through assigning labels to things like 'don't breathe through your nose' or 'look in the _left_ eye, it's the one that's actually looking back', the rest of me took over.

It was beautiful.

My tank top was starting to stick to me as I pulled the hook-thing out of my backpack and heaved the cover off the manhole. Donnie had given it to me for when he thought there was too much activity around the main entrance. I was supposed to come in the much more pungent back door.

But staring at the manhole cover, my brain wasn't _seeing_ the word 'Sewer', it was seeing 'Home'.

_That _word. Home.

This created a bit of an odd problem. I mean, it was strange enough that my Pavlovian response to my front door being a manhole was an overwhelmingly positive one, but it was flat out weird that I had substituted the word 'Home'. It was a big deal. Not because of the sewer, at least, not _exactly, _or _exclusively_ because of the whole sewer thing. It was because I was actually using the word 'home'.

I'd moved around a lot. Every couple years, a new city or a new country, punctuated with half-year stints in other places and programs and schools. It was probably something I should talk to a shrink about, but the word 'home' was something of an untouchable. I could, potentially, live anywhere and do anything, transience and travel and change… it was all normal. But calling some place home was like calling somebody your best friend for life. It was a big deal. It _promised_ things.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Donatello Hamato leaned back in his swivel chair and winced. Damn. Ribs. Raph was near enough to hear just about anything, so he stifled the groan that was pooling somewhere in the vicinity of his toes. Last night had quite nearly been a Disaster, with the capital letter fully deserved, but even the avoidance of a complete snafu wasn't making Donatello any less miserable. A crowbar to the ribs, amongst other things. Even with his plastron doing its job there was just so much concussive force a turtle could take before he started to feel like one of those nut-rolled spreadable cheese balls.

Mmmmmm. Cheese.

Donatello took a moment to remind himself that eating was _not_ a solution to engineering conundrums, even if cheese did appear to assist inspiration about six out of nine documented cases. Well, his own documented cases, which meant whenever he bothered to notice he was eyes-deep in an economy-sized cheesy snack bag.

There were other things to worry about anyway. The security stations were almost all up and in working order (the big one in China Town had suffered from the nasty little monkey who lived in an apothecary shop two blocks down – maintenance was a serious pain) and soon enough they'd be able to survey activity all over the city, maybe start picking up patterns. The situation had only seemed to homogenize over the last month and if nothing else, Donatello was more worried than ever.

At least…

Well, at least there weren't any problems at home. Raph's anger management was going well (he'd only broken one thing yesterday and it hadn't been on purpose), Leo was being fairly reasonable, no glowering into the middle-distance anyway, and Mikey was just being Mikey.

Even their guest was doing well. Donatello had agreed to April's idea at first because he was getting nervous and short on cash, a titchy situation at the best of times and he'd been feeling fairly desperate, but Geneva wasn't a bad tenant. She wasn't easily shocked, at least. When she first walked into the main room, it was to find Raphael nearly pounding the life out of Mikey. She had laughed, shifted one of her moving boxes to the other hip, and stepped around them.

And this morning…

She had come down the stairs, all dressed up for work, and stopped so fast she almost fell off her high heels. Donatello couldn't really blame her. The mess around the kitchen table was somewhere between horrific and impressive. Lots of blood anyway.

"Morning, Dudette!"

"Holy love of God…what happened?"

Donatello had simply clamped another hand over the nasty cut on his forehead and groaned while Leo tried to find the antiseptic. And Mikey was making pancakes. Of course. Mikey had an amazing grasp of priorities. He was also the first one to answer her question.

"We kicked ass!"

She raised an eyebrow and Mikey grinned, completely unabashed.

"Well, Donnie got knocked around pretty bad, but our overall score was 'kicked ass'. Nice shoes."

"Thanks. Whose ass did you kick?"

At this point Raphael had emerged from under the table, dragging a duffle bag and looking decidedly sour-faced.

"Buncha stupid, lily-white, pretty boy…"

Leo sighed and pulled Donatello's hand away from the cut to take a look at it, before quickly pressing the hand back.

"Did you know there was an organized crime extension in the city that comes from Liverpool?"

"…tea-headed, monarchist…"

Geneva frowned slightly, trying to ignore the still-ranting Raphael, and looked over at Leo.

"Um, no. I didn't know that."

"Interestingly enough, neither did we."

"…Limey Bastards!"

"Will you shut up long enough to find me the medical tape?"

A roll of white, linen tape shot towards Leo, who was occupied enough with that to miss that Geneva had already decided to round up some plates and a fresh rag for the kitchen table. She didn't wince when she wiped up Donatello's blood from the table, and didn't seem to mind that Mikey kept stealing things off her plate (mostly pieces of pineapple). She was also trying to answer Raphael's rather pointed questions while watching the clock and eating impressive bites of pancake.

"How do you like Brits?"

"Well, they've got great TV, good tea, it's the birthplace of Terry Pratchett…terrible food. Why?"

Raph's expression darkened and Donatello could see the fork in his hand bend slightly.

"All's I'm sayin' is the Revolution didn't come soon enough."

Geneva laughed.

"Aw, come on, I'm surprised it ever happened! All that taxation nonsense. The colonialists were already buying smuggled goods from the Dutch. They could've wallowed in the art of passive-aggression and avoided the whole thing."

Donatello had snorted into his orange juice and pointed an accusatory piece of cutlery.

"You're a Tory!"

"…well, probably, but being a hypothetical British Loyalist 250 years after the fact," She paused and looked pensive around the last bite of pancake. "Does that even count for anything? If nothing else, it just means I'm, like, Canadian…"

She trailed off and swallowed heavily, having finally noticed Mikey's decidedly crocodilian smile.

"If you had to pay really high price for tea, you'd put up a fight…"

His voice had taken on an ominous note as well. She took another bite and looked at the clock again.

"I suppose…"

His grin was really quite frightening now. "You know what _I_ think—"

Her sense of self-preservation must've kicked in because she was halfway out of her seat by the time she interrupted him.

"Sorry, Mikey, but I've really got to go. See you later?"

She'd taken off pretty quick and Donatello had to give her props for recognizing the signs of danger in Mikey. When he got that look on his face there were only two options. One: you could escape and stay escaped for as long as possible, or Two: you could play sailor and just ride out whatever this storm happened to be.

To be honest, behind all of his stifled whining, Donatello was feeling a little bit nervous on Geneva's behalf. After they'd gotten a good sleep Mikey had spent the early afternoon stalking around the lair and picking up random objects, grinning evilly. First there had been the two floodlights, Mikey had been wondering how to make them blink on and off, and then the extra-large roll of white medical tape, and then an old can of tea leaves, and _then _the old blue t-shirt that none of them had remembered owning. It probably belonged to Casey.

There were clearly more important things to do besides fear for the sanity for their tenant (obviously on the thin side – when would a sane person ever rent a room from a bunch of mutated turtles?) and Donatello tried to psych himself up for the rest of the evening. He ached like anything, but there was work to do and he was the only person around here smart enough to do it. He _could_ focus, and he _could_ get his work done. At least, he _would_ be able to if that noise stopped any time soon.

He turned in his swivel chair just in time to see Geneva barreling down the stairs, shorts barely visible under an enormous blue t-shirt with a big white 'X' across the front and back with white medical tape. There was a loud booming sound behind her and she shrieked with laughter before diving underneath Donatello's work bench.

While he was hard to surprise anymore (living with his brothers would do that to anybody) Donatello had to admit, this one was pretty good. He waited, quiet, and watched as Mikey hurled past him into the main room, hollering like a maniac.

"THE BRITISH ARE COMING!"

The flood lights were starting to make sense.

Donatello pulled away from his desk to stare under it at the flushed, hard-breathing form of their tenant, trying to stifle her laughter.

"Welcome home."

There was an odd, quick look of surprise in Geneva's face before it split into a smile that nearly took her over completely, all her teeth showing and her eyes nearly shut. It was sort of like watching a sunflower bloom all in one go.

"Thanks, Donnie."

* * *

><p><strong>AHA! And the next installment is going to come <em>much<em> sooner, fear not. At any rate, the little bits of language at the top of the story are explained below.**

(1) 'Princess'

(2) 'Teacher' – honorific title.

(3) 'If you want 100% in this class you have to flirt with the teacher.'


	6. In which beer cans are crushed

**Hello pretty peeples!**

I know, I know. I'm fully aware it's been almost two years. Yes. And that's bad. Especially in the Fanfiction world. It's even worse because when I started this little piece I was so excited and I got a nice collection of you to be excited WITH me. It was a wonderful experience... I even got Mikell to read and comment! *starstruck*

But then I went back to finish my bachelor's degree. It's not a GOOD excuse, it's just an excuse. It was for a while, anyway. I had friends who loved this fanfic, who like my style of writing anyway, and they kept asking me to add to it. I really wanted to. And then something happened to me. It was shocking, and stupid, and awful, and tragic and I didn't want to write anything for a long time. I knew that if I did, I'd have to write it out, to feel it all over again and I really didn't want to.

Recently, though, I was thinking that it's been long enough. I want to write it out. It'll help, I think. So this story is going to take a different road for a while. I promise it won't change, not in terms of how I write it, or what's going to happen in the end, it'll just add something I didn't expect. It won't make everything serious or un-funny, it will just make things a little more real. I just ask for your patience and constructive criticism.

**Shoutouts:**

**Silent Suspicion:** Thank you so much! I'm trying to make it work as well as it works in my head ^_^ I appreciate that you like my take. What I always appreciated the most in any TMNT depiction was their more realistic family-life moments when they're not tropes or cartoons, but real characters :) TMNT has my heart because IT has so much heart, even when it's badly done, it's right there, under the surface.

**Dragons redemption:** I know this is late, but I'm trying :)

**Jessie Rose 911:** Thank you! My favorite characters are always the smart plain-jane types. I'm biased, of course, because I'm definitely one of those and all my best friends have been. It's so much easier to write a character who was forced to grow a personality ;) ...You know how it is...

**Alluring Alliteration:** 0_o imagine my embarassment... thank you, though. I read that bit again and you're totally right. If I ever get the chance I'll definitely be fixing that. I hope you come back and give me some more advice, it was very much appreciated :)

**kaaayyytteee:** I FREAKING LOVE YOUR REVIEW. There, I said it. I hope you come back and read further because between you and Alluring Alliteration I will make more things that are loved, and they'll be even BETTER!

**nothing new in this world:** Yes! She is Korean :) I went to school with (and am now good friends with) a lot of Koreans, and so anything I write comes from a place of simultaneous adoration and frustration. They're possibly my favorite demographic right next to 80-year-old wheat farmers.

**Outasync:** Here's more to re-read! I will try very hard to keep giving some serious effort to making this really good. I love this, and I LOVE that you enjoy it!

**Laughter's Tears:** I always love to hear that the random is appreciated :) Random is right up there with pretty UPS drivers and free beer in the spectrum of 'things I was happy about today'.

**The Silent Hunter:** If you can believe it, when I saw it in my head, I laughed out loud. But then, I'm also the kind of person who cries when they write sad stuff :$ So, I'm glad it wasn't just me!

**Mikell:** You peerless goddess of fanfiction, please forgive me for my unreasonably long delay and I will profess my undying loyalty to you and your unerring ability to make 'interspecies' really sound like 'special'. Seriously, though, It's a gift. And we're getting to the whole 'splinter's take on the situation' thing pretty quick.

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own TMNT, any part of TMNT, any stock in its profits, none of its characters, nor do I have Eastman and Laird chained up in a closet doing everything I say. None of that. I do, however, own Geneva.**

* * *

><p>Chapter 5 - In which beer cans are crushed a la French film metaphors<p>

"Exactly how much of this important?"

"Jennifer..."

"No, I'm serious."

Geneva ran a badly manicured finger around the rim of her beer glass, reaching for something just a little too far away. This was...this was it.

"It's actually pretty important. This bit is, anyway. It matters."

A thick silence crept out from Geneva, maybe thickened by some addition of alcohol, but like a bad gravy spill it sort of glopped out and started making its way across the table. Elena noticed her expression first and tried to direct a well-aimed elbow at Jennifer.

"It...stuff was going great. I was feeling totally at home. I got my room set up with a forest of sun lamps. Donnie and I started trading books. Mikey and I would cook dinner on alternate nights."

"And then what? You had sex on a flour-covered table? What exact-will you stop kicking me!?"

"No. I-" Geneva cleared her throat. "I was... I missed a call."

The thicker tones under her voice, the echo that had been hiding under the earlier silence finally hit Jennifer. Then the reason.

"Oh? _Oh. _When was this?"

"October."

And nobody said anything for a few minutes.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Andrew slowly drew back, tree-trunk arms extended outwards, his back straight and carriage magnificent, like an Olympic diver waiting on his toes, utterly aware of every inch of himself.

The pub held its breath.

With one swift movement, arms acting as counterweights, Andrew plunged forward, the ancestral gift of his broad forehead bearing down on the PBR can, inevitability in motion. With a swift, crisp sound the can collapsed beneath the greatness of mankind and industry. Andrew raised his torso upwards, face stoic, brow wrinkled in concentration. It would've been utterly magnificent, except that he was going cross-eyed looking at the flattened can now being held in place by the facial muscles on his impressive forehead. Nobody was rude enough to mention it.

Geneva sprang forward, tape measure at the ready. The silence sucked back into the mouths of the expectant crowd as they awaited the verdict.

"One...half...inch!"

The assembly went wild.

"I GOT IT!"

Andrew leapt upward dizzily, catching Geneva by the hand.

"Now you've got to give me a dance, eh?"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"I've been texting her since she got off work, but she won't answer me!"

Raph looked up at his brother and squinted. That damn turtle was nearly 27 years old and refused to act like he was older than 12 on any given day. Right now, for instance, Mikey was hanging upside-down off the metal framework under the stairs, chewing on a six-inch gummy worm (here purely reasonable spikes of situational humor were lining up to tempt Raphael) and playing Angry Birds on his phone.

"You know she's got a life, right Mikey? Like, a job and everything."

His brother pouted for a moment and Raph wondered if it was his last statement or a poor tally of avian-related deaths.

"Well, I don't like it. You guys are old. She's fun."

Raph snorted and gave his brother a mild push, sending both Mikey and the gummy worm swinging slightly. He regretted it instantly.

"Yeah, she's just as crazy as you."

"What's going on?"

Raph turned to see his eldest brother standing only a few feet away. Sneaky, even for a Ninja. He rolled his eyes.

"We were jus' talkin about how weird you are, creepin' up on people like dat."

"No, seriously."

"We could talk about that," Mikey consented. "It's a little stalker-serial-killery, you know?"

"Jeff Dahmer called, by the way. Said you should meet him for coffee soon."

A low-five was exchanged. It was nice, Mikey thought absently, how him and Raph's relationship had mellowed a little over the years. Granted, most of their developed sense of camaraderie and affection involved pissing off Leo but Mikey would take that over an obligatory daily beating, no contest. Although, really, Mikey knew Raph liked him best, not _loved_, you know, just liked. He also knew Raph was oddly protective and didn't like anybody beating up on Mikey that wasn't him. Even Leo got a face full once when he accidentally dislocated Mikey's shoulder.

Leo, as oblivious as he usually was to Mikey's contemplation, let his expression settle into 'above this sort of thing'.

"You're talking pretty fast and loose for a guy watching his brother suck on a-"

"Hey guys. What's going on?"

"Hey Donnie!"

"Ya evah notice, Don, how ninjas are, like, really nosy?"

The sarcasm was nearly palpable, but Donatello had recently extracted himself from a collection of complicated blueprints and was still thinking in numbers. He thoughtfully repositioned the welding goggles on his beak, his now-magnified eyes giving him the definitive air of an overly curious chameleon.

"I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"Nevahmind. Mikey's bored. His toy is busy."

"Hey! That's not-"

"Geneva's not home yet? It's almost nine."

In something like an unspoken agreement Donatello, Leonardo, and Raphael turned towards the kitchen and away from the weakly protesting form of their (still-  
>inverted) brother. It was becoming difficult to focus on anything but the wet, pink, sucking sounds coming from around the gummy worm. They may have seen exploding monsters, compound fractures, well-used drainage pipes, and black-market organ trades but there were some things a Ninja was never meant to witness.<p>

"She's probably just at Culluhan's. Said she finished up mid-term progress reports on yesterday and wanted a night off."

"Oh, yeah...why do we care?"

"Mikey."

"...oh...right..."

They turned back just in time to see Mikey take a large bite of the gummy worm and cringed.

"You know," Donatello hazarded, "It's been kinda nice having him occupied recently. The only important stuff that's broken in the last month was that monitor by the west exit."

"I said sorry, Don, god."

"Raph, it's fine. I got to see Master Splinter give you a good kick yesterday. I totally forgive you."

"...you know what, Don? I'm not really feelin' sorry anymore. Where's the damn toaster..."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x

The two men climbed silently down from the truck. They didn't bother looking at each other, sharing the expression they were too used to wearing, had been used to for a very long time.

"She lives here?"

"April O'Neil. Her cousin. It was on the contact list."

The shop was a patch of well-worn comfort on a hard brick block. Pretty, antique lace curtains rippled at the windows, night air teaching them still, learning about movement and beauty. It was amazing what kind of things you noticed right before.

The first man took a deep breath, lines around his eyes and thin-veined suggestions of age by his severe haircut. His dress collar itched, but scratching always made it worse, somehow. He looked at his clipboard.

"Apartment's on the second floor."

The other simply nodded and followed, carrying the smooth, tan envelope in his hands, like it could rain, like it would ruin, like it might explode.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

"You think you could keep your dinner plates hands _off_ my ass, Andrew?"

He grinned, sunbursts flowing from his eyes, the aforementioned hands returning to covering more waist than Geneva thought possible. He was a little foggy, she knew, but his buzz was contagious and his view soft-focused. She felt golden in his eyes. Drunk too, in her own way, on his unspoken flattery.

"You're a grand girl, Geneva."

"So I'm told," she laughed, trying not to feel too much for this dancing picture, this carousing piece of poetry. It was getting harder to concentrate with the fiddle sounding like this, sounding like the outside air in early fall, sounding like stars. The logic-based segment of her brain pinched her.

'He's a serial dater.' It said.

Geneva ignored it.

'He knows he's beautiful.' It said.

Geneva smiled. That was a fair assessment, and he was absolutely right.

'He knows what this music does to you, that it echoes all across your chest, inside your feet, deep, deep down.'

Geneva knew. And as she was whirled across the floor, quite possibly by the only man in five boroughs who knew how to dance to a reel, she let the poetry fill her up. She was skimming over an ancient, pock-marked wooden floor, to a fiddle that danced for it's listeners, with a man whose eyes should've belonged to a maddening, hearty sailor hundreds of years before. Maybe this had happened before and she was some open-hearted kitchen maid with curls and curves and soot on her feet. Maybe this night would happen again in two hundred years.

Her phone buzzed again and she blissfully ignored it. Whatever it was could wait.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx

"You know, Master Splinter doesn't really like her."

Donatello and Leonardo shifted slightly, putting another foot or so between themselves and their suddenly fascinating sibling.

"Raph, not to sound rude, but since when are you good at picking up social subtext?"

Donatello received a sudden, substantial pinch in the soft flesh of his arm. He didn't bother stifling the yelp.

"Raph! I hate it when you pinch me there!"

Raph only raised an eyebrow ridge.

"I know." He let that sink in a moment. "Donnie, if anybody knows what barely toleratin' somebody looks like -"

"...It's you. That is true."

"I'm eida seein' it, or givin' it. I know."

Leo nodded. "Why do you think he doesn't like her?"

The contemplative silence was broken when Donnie dared to raise a careful finger.

"She does call him 'Mr. S.' He always twitches his whiskers when she does that."

"Oh, yeah. And that one day she called green tea 'bitch water'.

"And pretty early on, like her second week here, she ate that piece of leftover cake."

Leonardo snapped to attention. In his mind's eye very detailed, terrible things were happening beneath the dark, fathomless waters of his father's mental processes. There were certain things you didn't mess with. Ever. Especially if you wanted to keep all four of your toes attached to your body and on the same continent.

"What, seriously?"

"Donnie did it."

Donatello wished very much there was a crack he could sink into.

"I'm sorry! I get used to people understanding the code words 'don't let Master Splinter have any, yadda yadda yadda, blood pressure'."

The words that were always said at exactly the right volume, usually followed by slightly louder-than-necessary questions about the flavor and level of deliciousness (generally exaggerated to the nth degree, determined by taking deliciousness over the square root of frosting - for a given value of buttercream).

"So, nobody explained?"

"She joked about going 'above and beyond the call of duty'..."

It really had been sort of horrible. Donatello had realized his mistake only when he walked back into the kitchen to retrieve his favorite butter knife - sometimes screwdrivers just didn't do the trick - and was met with the expression of utter betrayal on his father's face and half of the cake already inside their new roommate. He shivered.

"Well, the cake explains it."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx

"Does Donnie know what's going on yet?"

April tried to shake her head as she concentrated on remaining plank-straight. It was amazing how her husband could spend days speaking only one-word answers or simply grunting eloquently, but every time he started working out, more specifically when he was weight-lifting, he would suddenly become a Chatty McCathyPants. It was a little bit more irritating that he'd start talking only when using her as a bench-press weight, or when he was using her for curls. Sometimes she wondered if he did it on purpose, waited until the one moment when it was the most difficult to respond just to make sure he could talk a thought out to it's natural end. Even so, April didn't know how much credit she wanted to give a man who would cheerfully goldfish crackers to actual goldfish.

"He said -" ten. "That there's been-" eleven. "Changes in hierarchy-" twelve. "All over the city-" thirteen."

"Oh." Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. "Does he know why there's all those girls?"

April thought through that sentence a few times. Seventeen through twenty-two.

"What girls-" twenty-three. "Are you talking about?" twenty-four.

"All the new ones," twenty-five. "A bunch of girls down by the italian place two blocks down." twenty-six, twenty-seven. "I think they live in the store," twenty-eight.

"That's...wait...what?" twenty-nine. "That doesn't make sense, Casey," thirty.

"I dunno," thirty-one, and his face was finally pulling together with effort and thought. "there's just a lot there," thirty-two, "and I don't see 'em in the neighborhood." Thirty-three.

"Not anywhere?" thirty-four.

"Nope." thirty-five. "A couple of 'em seemed real young, too." thirty-six.

Whatever April's response would've been, the doorbell cut it short.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx

Mikey flipped through the news, wondering if it was sounding weird because he'd been hanging upside down for so long or if the stereo system was off. Either way, the on-site coverage from Portland looked interesting. He tried to text Geneva again.

'ur missing out. news w/ candy. gonna eat one octoplus every time they say the words'

He didn't finish his text, focused only on the screen now. Where was this?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx

"I bested the bar record!" Andrew was lumbering around the other side of the table, long arms outstretched, making bear-paw swipes at Geneva as she howled with laughter and tried to avoid his grasp.

Finally, one large hand caught the back of her jacket and simply stopped moving. She jerked to a stop and, gasping and trying to wiggle away, noticed the look on his face.

That look was going to be difficult to say 'no' to. Especially with his face so close, eyes searching her mouth and smiling past her protests.

"Listen," with his warm, beery breath floating down over her collarbones and somehow carving holes into her stomach, Geneva didn't know if she could listen.

"Yes?"

"I'm gonna find my jacket... and my wallet... and then you're going to let me buy you late dinner."

"...hmmm?"

"I've decided that was a yes!"

And just as quickly he was lumbering off to retrieve his belongings. Geneva took this opportunity to breathe properly and check her phone before she could claim to not have seen any kind of...

Seventeen missed calls. Five voicemails. All from April.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx

They just stood in April's livingroom, statue-like, cold and motionless. Waiting as April tried again, one more time,

"Hello? April, what's wrong?"

The silence sucked at April's feet like a riptide, Casey standing at her side, hand on her back, protective and solid.

"There's...there's two men in uniform here, Geneva. They want to talk to you."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx

She was sweet, bright, bouncing, with hair like an entertaining natural disaster. And she had a kiss hiding in that mouth, he knew for sure, but when Andrew came back less than two minutes later all he saw was a small figure sitting on the floor, face motionless, eyes dark.

A girl, empty-hearted, drowning in air...

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><p><strong>Sorry about that first go-round of this chapter! I forgot they don't put the asterisk segments in -facepalm- It really has been way too long since I updated. Come on back, readers. I really do love you. No lie :$<br>**


	7. In Which Distraction Begets Distraction

**W_elcome back, lovely people!_**

_**I hope that this much more timely update will endear me to you all once again. I offer myself up to you for criticism (constructive) and perhaps mild approval :)**_

_**Also, a 'moonglade' is the way that the light of the moon will make what looks like a path on the surface of the water. Just for future reference.**_

_**And so, without further ado...**_

**SHOUTOUTS**

**The Light of Reason:** Thank you so much for reviewing! And I really appreciate your approval of my OC... oh my lanta but are they hard to write well :$

**I am a Band Nerd:** Honestly, even after a year + It makes all the difference in the world. Thank you so much. And don't worry, I hope to be updating a LOT more often. I love this story way too much to just let it die.

**Xipholynx:** Thanks! I'm on it :) Much more to come.

**DISCLAIMER: I currently do not hold the copyrights to anything spawned from the brilliance of Eastman and Laird that has anything to do with TMNT. I do, however, own Geneva. **

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><p><strong>Chapter 6 - In Which Distraction Begets Distraction<strong>

She had seventeen packets to grade still. That might take her all afternoon. All afternoon, when what she really wanted was to sleep in the beautiful (expensive) pillow-topped invention that magically loved her to sleep every night. Maybe it was a bit cold so to say so, but Geneva was becoming convinced that if her life included a proper bed and 1,000 count egyptian cotton sheets men could be seen as purely incidental. Especially since even Andrew didn't seem able to help her forget how much stress she was trying to push through. At least her bed let her sail away for hours at a time. Entire afternoons, half-saturdays, buried in warm, soft, safe things.

Since when was she so tired?

Since the Uniforms, and their deep, dark-edged eyes and stony faces. This must be the worst job in the world, she remembered thinking. To say the things that they had to, over and over again. Even as they spoke to her, as they explained, the sorrier she had felt. For them. For every time they had to do this.

And every day, even the best parts, the warm chaos of her classroom, the movie nights with Mikey, everything made her so tired. Her brother called yesterday. She walked out of class, out of the middle of a lecture on 'The Cultural Context of a Pioneer Nation', just to talk to him. Just because. And that nearly emptied her.

"_A la, Profe, porque no me hablas..._"

Her head snapped up and was shocked to meet a concerned expression, from Juanfer, of all people. Without his perpetual puckish attitude he was almost unrecognizable. His eyebrows weren't the same shape, his eyes missing the joy they usually held, the mischief, the madness. It sort of made her want to reach up and rearrange it, like molding clay, pulling and smoothing and repairing something she so enjoyed the look of. Maybe it was inappropriate, she was his English teacher after all, but she slipped into Spanish anyway. Just to hear it. Just to hear something nice.

"_Hey, sorry, did you want something?"_

Juanfer's eyes widened a little bit. None of the other teachers at the school would speak anything but English to their students. Not even that guy from Marseilles. He was pretty sure it was in their contract.

_"um, yeah... I... are you ok, teacher?"_

_"Oh, I'm just tired."_

But it was more than that. The 'Introduction to Grammatical Structure' professor was tired all the time and even she could manage to fling chalk-filled erasers at sleeping students. Teacher wasn't talking the same, answering questions the way she usually did, or teaching normally. She even looked different.

_"You're getting really skinny."_

Juanfer was so suprirsed by her bark of laughter that he lept back nearly a foot.

_"I am? I've never had somebody say that before."_

He supposed he could understand why. Honestly, it was part of why he was...concerned? Was that the right word? _Nervioso,_ maybe, but it was _porque profe_ was always so happy, so _lleno de energia,_ and he liked that she was friendly, and that she cared and made hard work feel like it meant something. Most adults weren't like that. If he thought about it, most of them were like this, like his teacher was looking now, vague, impassive, and uninterested. But for all his concern, Juanfer could feel his face taking up its old shape, the cloud of bright edges and color seeping back into him, pushing out from inside his bony chest. It picked up the corners of his mouth, which fell so easily into his smile, the one it'd found the very first time he'd painted an entire wall with mud.

_"That's because you eat like a horse..."_

If there was something true in the universe, thought a passing beetle as it moved gracefully, gratefully up the vines around the windowsill, it was that nature is nature. If something grows one way, it's hard to make it grow another. Also, humans laughed weird.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x

"She's been acting weird."

Leo reflected for a moment. There was something about the way Mikey could state the obvious. Everyone, theoretically, possessed their own unique talents, but Mikey's ability to declare things like 'the dishes need to be washed' seemed to carry a level of clarity and immediacy that was usually reserved for statements like 'there's a forest fire' or 'I've been bitten by a shark'. In keeping with Mikey's general abilities, this statement was well-weighted.

"You've noticed?"

"Yeah. She hasn't talked a lot...for, like, a month."

Ever since she'd left. She said she'd gone to visit family for a few days. When she came back something was different. At first she'd gained weight, about five pounds, nothing much. Then she'd lost about twenty pounds. Her skin was a little paler. She was spending longer getting dressed, looking more put together. When she spoke it was clear, clipped, friendly, and seemed to echo a little. Her smile was either tight or vague or unfocused. Her eyes didn't move much.

"It's probably hard to get a word in edgewise around you.." Leo tried for a teasing tone, gave his brother a light shove, let his mouth curl up at the edges.

"No... the other night I asked her a question and she just stared, like, at me or past me or something. I had to ask her again, like, twice, before she even realized I was talking."

There was only mild annoyance in Mikey's voice. He liked having somebody who was willing to spend time with him on his terms. Too long ago his brothers had become interested in other things, things that were productive, but not joyful, not colorful, not awesome. Just useful. Geneva had filled in that odd space, the space where he wasn't alone all the time, or bored out of his mind between training sessions and midnight runs.

Mikey was not oblivious. Well, not completely. At the very least he wasn't oblivious enough to think he'd get a lot more friends like that. He had this theory in his younger years that when somebody turned 20, sometime during the night, as their new year selves, came running down the moonglade that ran all the way through the side of service tunnel 14F they would finally catch a glimpse of the old railway station. And this new person would be slowed down just enough, wondering different, useful things. By the time the new year you came to take your place so you could run back up the moonglade, they'd already been thinking all sorts of new things.

It was even more interesting to note that when Mikey shared this theory with Raphael his brother had grumbled something about how Mikey shouldn't be reading the Anne of Green Gables books anymore.

"...how would you know what referencing?"

It made for some subtle but impressive blackmail material.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx

"...and then I blew up my car and sold my own grandmother into slavery..."

A rough eddy in the waters of universal absurdity brought Geneva back to the present.

"...I'm sorry, what?"

"Geneva, are you ok? You haven't been here all night."

She stifled a sigh and tried not to look into Andrew's eyes. It was true. Every day it seemed just that much harder to pay attention. But he looked so _concerned_. It was a little...odd, maybe? Not that she didn't expect friends to care about her, at least due to her being fairly willing to buy a round or two without bitching. Sometimes, though, she sort of wished she could leave herself 'on', with the smile and interesting conversation and the rest of her could just go off and hole up in a library, reading Poirot novels and Hitchhiker's Guide. Sometimes she just wished people would let her drift like this, not get weird and upset. Or worried.

"I'm sorry, I've just been really..."

"Distracted?"

"...yeah. I'm sorry." She pushed a smile onto her face. This expression was getting easier these days. It'd been really hard at first. "How about I take another couple sips of coffee and you start again."

Andrew smiled back and picked up his big hands again.

"Sure! Alright, so, I was singing with Benji -" She felt herself drifting already, took a long draught of coffee and pulled her brain back to moor. "And we're going to Scotland!"

She almost spat the coffee out. Not that it would've been a huge tragedy. Blake couldn't make coffee properly although, to be fair, it was a bit much to expect in a bar.

"Seriously? Andrew, that's amazing! For how long?"

"A few months. But we're not leaving until just before Christmas."

So, one month. Not that it made much difference. Not that she would be doing anything about it.

"Wow. So, what are you doing until then? What're you gonna do with your apartment?"

Andrew's eyes were doing that thing that had so reliably made her want to smile, by accident, by nature, simply because. It was certainly pleasant. He was beautiful. But there was no easy smile this time.

And she felt herself drifting again.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx

"I'm worried about her."

Casey grunted eloquently and April wondered how much of a response she'd get if she gave him a good whack with her spoon. But then, she hated to think what might end up in the cookies. Besides, the golden-hearted idiot was just so damn kissable. So she did.

"Hey."

That did it. Casey tended to be a little bit more alert when his blood was flowing.

"I said, I'm worried about her."

"I know. I said 'she'll be fine'."

April tilted her head a moment, taking in the strong chin, broken nose, and wild, boyish eyes of her husband before she chuckled and pushed a section of hair behind her ear.

"Of course you did. Sorry, I wasn't paying very close attention."

Large arms pulled her and the cookie-battered spoon down to his level.

"She's got the boys, she's got Master Splinter. She'll be ok."

"But she's been really...distracted."

"So've you. It's normal. I had that problem too, when my dad went. She's just gotta think."

April considered that for a minute.

"Casey, by the time you were 'done thinking' you'd become a masked vigilante who regularly beat the shit out of muggers with a baseball bat."

Casey shrugged.

"She's not a big girl. Probably won't beat people up."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxx

Dinner prep would be going a lot faster if Mikey would focus. Not that Leo had seen a lot of improvement since the day they had started training... 27 years ago. You'd think he'd be used to this by now.

"She almost drank out of the Tabasco bottle yesterday."

"That is a little weird."

Mikey nodded. "Yeah, especially since she usually drinks the Worcestershire sauce. I mean, look at these!" He brandished the two bottles. "Totally different!"

"...she has seemed a little distracted."

Leo had wondered about it too. Maybe a little differently from Mikey. Really late at night, sometimes, Leo could hear her. Their rooms shared a wall, and his bed pushed right up against it. She cried. Not loudly, just long, for hours. She kept spoons and cucumber slices in her mini fridge, and he'd caught her drinking gallons of water through long straws. She used to have a beer with dinner every night. Now she'd not touched a drop of alcohol in a little over a month.

She hadn't come home that night. They'd gotten a text from April, Geneva was going to be staying with her for a couple of days. No other news. She was gone, out of her own room for maybe a week before she came back, another rent check in hand and a coffee for Donnie, like she hadn't been anywhere.

It was... just odd. But Leo didn't quite know how to feel about it. It wasn't like the boys didn't like her. She was ok. Mikey and her had become buddies right off the bat, her appreciation for absurdity and gleeful madness much more 'highly developed' than Leo's (her words, not his). But she wasn't family. She wasn't a hard-earned friend, or a lover, or a mutant, or an appreciative scientist. She was just their roommate...which, when Leo ever stopped to think about it, was an oddly normal thing to have in their lives. It worked well, no doubt about that, but it wasn't as if they were close. He couldn't exactly barge into the room of an adult human female and ask 'what in the world was the matter' and would she 'please tell him so he can get back to his calligraphy, her odd little sobs were throwing him off'. Even Raphael wasn't that big of a dick.

Maybe the oddest thing was that every day, when she came home from work, she greeted the boys, laid her bag down, and went to talk to Master Splinter.

It's not that Master Splinter and their renter hadn't gotten along. Not exactly, anyway. There had been the cake, poorly-placed sentences, incorrect assumptions about family dynamics, but nothing fatal. Master Splinter didn't like her very much, not actively anyway (Leo assumed she occupied roughly the same status of appreciation that Casey did) but she meant well and helped the boys clean his room every Thursday. Until a month ago.

Donnie had mentioned something, said he'd seen it. Her first day back at work she came home a little earlier than usual looking a little vague, walked up to Master Splinter's door, took her shoes off, knelt, and knocked. Less than 30 seconds later she was talking quietly with their father. And every day since. She'd come home from work, reach down, pull off her heels, rearrange her hair and her dress, kneel, and knock.

Just yesterday Donnie'd seen her carefully remove her heels and settle to her knees in front of Master Splinter's door. She was wearing this bright teal crinoline under a black dress with a poufy skirt, and as she sunk down, seeking a respectful stance at the door of his father and sensei, her whole dress seemed to float a moment before settling around her in puffs of color.

They'd talk for over an hour sometimes. Geneva and Master Splinter.

Her room had gotten cleaner. Leo had always wondered if he was the only one who experienced this particular side-effect of his father's lectures. His brothers clearly didn't respond that way.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxx

If anybody thought about it for more than five minutes they might say 'Geneva, why are all the people in your life cruel, heartless bastards?'. And she would say 'I don't know. I haven't done anything'. Which was true. But everybody was making things difficult. She tried to drift, just let herself think, and every time somebody would bring up something, usually several somethings, that she didn't want to think about. Grading homework was becoming relaxing, for pete's sake. Showers were like a luxury cruise, with the hot water blocking out other sound, and nobody walking up and asking questions she'd actually have to think about.

At least she felt clean. Sometimes she'd wake up and the clammy air down here would make her feel cold and sticky, somehow.

There was a knock at her door.

"Come in."

"Hey, I -"

Even with that odd, swallowed quality to the words, she smiled. Almost by accident, by nature.

"Hey Mikey." Geneva answered, sifting through her closet. "What can I do for you?"

There was a cough, an 'um', and a light choking sound.

"...what?"

This dress would do for tomorrow. But she wasn't sure what pajamas. It was becoming something of a science, getting dressed for bed around here. With the quality of the air vs the actual temperature, wearing too much or too little clothing could mean she'd wake up feeling just as gross and another shower would be necessary.

Tanktop...and the thin grey sweats? Hmmmm...no...

"What's going on? Do you need anything?"

"...uummmm..."

Something was off. She looked at the purple nightshirt and tried think. She turned around.

"Mikey, are you ok?"

Was it possible for turtles to change color?

"...um. Dudette...why..."

Geneva processed this, and then his horrified hand gesture. She looked down at herself...and her Wonder Woman bra and matching panties.

Oh. Right.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxx

Raphael quivered, his long-worn leg muscles protesting, but adrenaline singing through his brain. Midnight runs didn't solve things, he knew, but they certainly made him feel better. Especially if he was checking up on Donnie's cameras all across a whole borough, then he might get himself out of regular maintenance tomorrow. Sure, he was curious about the activity they'd seen, the patterns they were picking up, but there was still nobody to beat the tar out of and Casey had tickets to a BJ Penn fight tomorrow night. There was no way in hell he'd miss that for wire stripping, listening to Donnie talk tech for three hours and/or getting shot at. His curiosity had limits. Unless, of course, it meant finding his little brother sprawled across the bottom of the half-pipe, clearly not wounded or dead... just looking a little sick. He was curious about that.

Raph moved close enough to give Mikey a prod with his foot.

"Hey. What the hell? D'you eat a jelly-doughnut pizza again?"

Mikey just groaned and plopped an arm across his eyes.

"Dude. What's wrong?"

"Ohmygod."

Her hair'd been wet, and all down one shoulder... it'd gotten longer since she'd moved in. And she was a redhead, so there were freckles on her face, and arms, and legs, but across her back, and above those two dimples, there was just shockingly white, unbroken skin. And the mole. Just one. Right below the Wonder Woman bra.

"...ohmygod..."

Raph's voice turned sardonic.

"Mikey, are you gonna die?"

She'd turned around and asked...what she could do for him.

"Yes."

"Is it gonna be tonight?"

Probably not.

"Yes."

"Well, make sure you call me right before. I wanna see this."

Boobs.

"...omygod..."

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><p><strong>Another chapter up! :) Poor Mikey. Fear not, however, for this is just part of the snowball. More soon! Please R&amp;R, tell me what you thought, and what you liked!<strong>


	8. In Which Views on Propriety areExchanged

**Hello Pretty Peeples!**

_I'm sorry for the delay, but I promise, it's just because I'm insanely busy and have a 25 page paper that I keep putting off by writing completely unrelated things :)_

_BUT, here is your next chapter. It doesn't have exactly the flow that I wanted, but it was sort of an important transitional chunk that I felt like I couldn't properly leave out. Good news is, though, that the next few chapters will be a lot more active in their plot direction, so if you can be patient, I'll give you more fun times!_

**Shout Outs:**

**Laughter's Tears:** Thank you so much for your review :) I get in more trouble from my writing professors for all the 'little things' than anything else (including my passive sentence structure). It's awesome to know that somebody out there enjoys it!

**The Light of Reason:** I was pretty happy about the Anne of Green Gables bit myself, I wrote it for heaven's sake, and I was giggling like an idiot! Thanks for reviewing.

**Jackie:** Oh. My. Lanta. Thanks ;)

**Zysea:** I aim to please! And I had a friend who told me that if I learned how to make readers AND myself happy then I could enjoy a long, if not lucrative, career, as a scribbling fool, which sounds kind of like heaven to me :) On that line, any criticism you could give me would be GREATLY appreciated.

**DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Stop bringing up such a painful subject. See previous chapters for specifics.**

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><p><strong>Chapter 7 -<strong> In which Views on Propriety are Exchanged

Mikey was not a morning person. That is to say, he was an 'all the damn time, thank you very much' person. Mornings weren't particularly special. This morning, though, something was just a little bit different. Something was...special? Maybe off was a better word.

-WHACK-

"Ow!"

Sure, it'd started at the ungodly hour of 5:00 AM, but that wasn't weird either. On lesson days Master Splinter had been known to wake them up mid REM cycle and make them run a ten mile trash collection detail. If the New York City administrative offices knew how much that old rat had done to clean up the underground they'd give him a friggin' medal. Not that he'd ever picked up trash himself. It must be good to be the sensei.

-WHACK-

"Ow!"

Today, though, Mikey'd woken up in something like soft-focus. Things were fuzzy on the edges, lighter, even more than usual. One time, when Master Splinter had given him a particularly strict lecture, he told Michelangelo to 'go, take time, and meditate on the ways in which your brother sees the world. Then you may understand why he leads as he sees prudent.'

He shuddered at the memory.

-WHUMP-

"Ooof..Ow!"

It had been so...neat. He knew what Master Splinter had said about 'visual interpretations being purely individual conceptions, blah blahity blah' whatever. There were boxes, of all sizes, and everyone and everything had a place. There was a tea ceremony. And the floor was very, very cold and very, very clean. There was so little color...

Mikey had been remarkably submissive for a long time after that, more full of pity and concern for his big brother than he had thought possible. And he was more than a little afraid that if he made another big mistake Master Splinter would tell him to think about the way his other brothers thought, too. Mikey certainly didn't want to know what happened inside Raph's mind. He could easily imagine a wall, like brickwork of emotion and excess, topped with broken glass and covered with pictures of...lord only knows. Missing kids, maybe. It would be something that pulled you in and drowned you in the much-ness of it all. He couldn't do it.

-WHACK-WHACK-WHACK-

"Owowowow!"

After that, Mikey saw the inside of his own head a little differently. It was really nice, for one. All the color, and the smell, and the feeling of humid air on his skin, food's taste and the way it slipped down his throat and warmed him from the middle outward. The shuff of his rough fingers and bare feet on the smooth floor of the dojo and the bright, lit path of his joy leading... everywhere. The feeling of being him. He'd not cared to try looking inside anybody else since then, you know, not counting that meth boss Raph had caught up with two a couple months back.

"Mikey!"

"...whaaaat?"

It occured to Mikey that his brothers were all looking at him... and not looking particularly pleased.

"I mean, 'what did I do this time, sirrah'?"

Three sets of brow ridges furrowed. This could get bad.

"You haven't been paying attention... to anything."

Mikey protested, or tried to, anyway. Maybe there would be forgiveness points for effort, who knew?

"I was so paying attention, ya'know, to some stuff."

Leo got down on his haunches, his expression a picture of loving exasperation.

"Mikey, I literally just walked up behind you and kicked you in the quad. Didn't do it fast, or sneak or anything."

That would explain why his leg felt like it was on fire. Leo made a lot of noise about his stupid Katanas, but ain't nobody ever stood up to that damn snap-kick.

"Oh."

"Yeah. What the hell's wrong with you?"

Mikey tried to sniff loftily. Nobody bought it. If Mikey was 'lofty' then Leo was a seven-eyed squid demon... you know, except for that one time after Stockman tried to... but Leo tended to avoid thinking about that weekend.

"Nothing."

A horrible lie. There were entire sections of his brain that were cheerfully destroying everything else.

"I was just thinking."

As if it could be called thinking instead of something more accurate, like trying not to think. Ever again. About anything. Especially not anything remotely connected to anything resembling females. Of any species.

Raph snorted.

"Jus' don't hurt yerself, princess."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Do you like him?"

The words eased towards Geneva in the thick afternoon air, seated as close as she was to the radiator, the vowels dipped and consonants spun in eddies around her. And then their meaning arrived. She dropped down a corner of her newspaper.

"...I...what?"

April still sat as Geneva had so often seen her, head tilted to one side like a dangerously inquisitive bird. Hawks came to mind.

"Do you like him?"

This wasn't helping. How obtuse could her cousin be?

"Like who?"

It was her cousin's turn to look irritated. Mmmmm... the give and take of familial connection. Geneva wondered if April had missed this when they couldn't find her, when their uncle had disappeared. For so long she'd been drifting along, all by herself, utterly without female relatives to verbally spar with and love and abuse and get in her business. Geneva wondered if she was odd in believing that to be terribly empty and lonely existence. If people weren't pushy and nosy and huggable, and unreasonably affectionate, how in the world were you supposed to know if they loved you?

"Andrew...clearly. What do you mean, 'like who'? How many young men are you trailing now?"

"Are we counting students? If we are, the list gets a little longer. I want to tell the little shits to shove off... but I get more fruit baskets this way..."

April brought a hand to her mouth, covering a smile, and Geneva smiled back.

"Oh my lord, are you serious?"

"...yeah. Not super proud of it, mind you, but it sort of makes up for the grammar teacher. That creepoid keeps buying me single flowers. And they're all different, so I think he's trying that weird victorian 'flowers have meaning' thing, but I'm staunchly refusing to look it up. I think that'd just line me up for some serious therapy."

April was properly giggling now. A long, sharp feeling of need shot through Geneva. She wanted to hear her cousin laugh again. Like a bandaid on a gunshot wound.

"I mean, it's always possible that he's just going for 'all of these symbolize your vagina' but that's another dark, dark road I'd rather not go down."

April threw back her head and laughed. Geneva breathed a sigh of relief. Somebody could still laugh like that. Maybe she could too.

"But, in all seriousness, I don't know. Andrew's Andrew, I guess. You met him, right?"

"Mmmm. Handsome, in a Braveheart kinda way. What's not to like?"

Geneva shrugged, wondering if she'd lost her smile already. It was a little hard to tell sometimes.

"I don't think I actually liked him before. More like... you know how sometimes you're tempted to date a guy who's a little bit like a cartoon character? You know he's a ...that... whatever that is, and you wanna see what it's like. Like a Rich Guy, or an Older Man, or a Bad Boy?"

April's smile widened and gained a few years.

"Screw you, Date Yoda. Where were you when I married one?"

And Geneva found herself smiling by accident. That was nice.

"Cheering you on, bitch! Your man's got arms like tree trunks and the heart of a Good Ol' Boy. No way was I going to discourage that. Not that they would ever admit it, but I bet at least half of the women CEOs on the Fortune 500 list would give their left fake boob for a chance to be with your man."

"Well, good luck to them. If I can't understand a thing he does, a woman five times smarter than me won't stand a chance."

"Well... you understand some things he does..." Geneva's waggled eyebrows disappeared behind a heavily embroidered cushion and a satisfying -WHUMP- sound.

"You don't get to harp about my sex life unless you actually talk about yours! You know that's the rule..."

Geneva pouted.

"Come on! Spill!"

And too suddenly Geneva grimaced. It was almost like watching a program glitch. You work with coding that contradicts what you forgot you put there first and...

"It only happened once. And it wasn't... ugh. I'm sure it..."

"What!? Omygod. Tell me!"

"I hated it so much! I mean, ok, he clearly knew what he was doing, and I... enjoyed myself, you know... and afterwards I hated it. It wasn't anything like when I was with John. I think I'm just spoiled, or ruined or whatever."

Geneva's old boyfriend. A sweet-faced boy with a sense of humor that couldn't stop from reaching through his heart, spilling into his eyes. They had been best friends, had been together so long and simply hadn't worked out. It was an old story, and one that never seemed to be completely closed.

"What, John was better in bed?"

Another grimace.

"...no...it's just that, even when we were being really romantic, we'd be laughing and teasing each other. Laughing was normal, you know? And it never ruined the mood... honestly, the more something was ridiculous or didn't work out the better it would be afterwards. Andrew was..." She made a different face here, a little too much like a 5 year old who hears 'cookies' only to discover you really meant 'oatmeal raisin'. Like a deep sense of betrayal.

"He tried to be sexy...? Anyway, it was weird. I didn't like it. And honestly, I felt kind of dirty afterwards."

April's eyes narrowed slightly, mostly in contemplation, but she noted the tired sigh building in her cousin's shoulders.

"You live in 2013, Geneva. You're allowed to-"

"I'm sorry, April, but I'm not the type of girl who has sex when they're not in love. I mean, John and I didn't even start until we'd been together over a year. I tried 'just sex' once. With Andrew. It was awful."

"...You do know sex and love aren't fundamentally inclusive terms, right?"

Geneva frowned.

"...yeah, but who says they have to be mutually exclusive?"

April wasn't sure how to answer that.

"But it doesn't really matter. I haven't seen him since.. I..." Geneva looked like she was stifling a look that might've been a smile if it wasn't horrified. "I didn't call him back. How awful am I..."

April examined her cousin a moment, weighing this and that... curious.

"Did you do it just because..."

Geneva's face froze.

"I don't know. Maybe." She shifted uncomfortably. "April, what's wrong with me?"

The echo was still there. It hadn't changed much since that night. It made Geneva's voice sound a little hollow, made her eyes deeper.

What would Geneva's mother do?

April hesitated a moment before moving to kneel in front of her cousin. One of her best friends in the entire world, and a ray of human normalcy inside her real life. A blessing.

"There's nothing wrong with you. This is normal. Wanting to feel something else, even if it's stupid -"

Geneva groaned and April let herself chuckle.

"Hey, it's ok. It'll get better, I promise."

Geneva swallowed heavily.

"Are you sure...?"

"Positive." April, oddly, found herself smiling at a memory, a hard, aching one. And all of that night so long ago, peripheral pictures and sharp edges to a horrible sense of loss. And a fire.

"You're with the boys. No matter what you lose... they're just so alive. Let yourself spend more time with them. You might start to feel better a little sooner."

"Really?"

"Well, granted, it's not the same thing, but do you have any idea how many times my shop was blown up? Or burned to the ground? Or invaded by Foot ninja? Trust me, honey. I know."

And all at once April found her arms full of a sobbing cousin, and a face full of wild red hair. Between the debates, and the abuse, and people in her business, maybe this was exactly the kind of thing that family was good for.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

There are days when Donatello thought he'd either been training or staring at computer readouts his whole life... which, you know, take 4, multiply by luck, carry the 2. he pretty much had.

Training was nice for that though. And it was in pairs today, just him and Mikey. That made it easier to think. If Donatello took a readout and passed it through his abacus-brain as he ducked, struck, drifted, and pressed, things became clearer, his fighting more instinctual... today, though, the only thing improving was his sparring responses.

For starters, all this mob business was making zero sense. Nothing. And so much activity. Half the random criminal activity business fronts in the city were making legitimate money! If Hamato Donatello had that kind of luck he was sure he'd be human, living on his own private island covered with naked women, swimming in money, and a guest professorship offer from Harvard, LeTourneau, MIT, and Oxford. And a fully stocked chemistry lab. And his own submarine... that he had designed and somebody else had built.

Block, sidestep, strike, spin, roll, kick out...

But if they were selling something new, this mattered. Not that there was any evidence of that. No new drugs, as far as he could tell, a great deal fewer black market trades overall, not nearly as many killings. As far as Donnie had managed to figure out the instances of violent crime in the city had dropped precipitously in the last few months. It should've made him happy, really, but Don knew he was one of those idiots who didn't just look a gift horse in the mouth, he usually gave it a complete dental examination with a cleaning and the option of having cavities filled.

Kick, block, kick, strike, sweep, kick, strike...

What was different? Maybe that was it. There were fewer things to watch. So little illegal activity. So little evidence of anything besides uncanny business luck.

What was there more of?

"...say, Mikey?"

"What?! Geeze you'd think -"

-WHACK-

Donatello's favorite brother (information: classified, filed under 'things I do not tell people but I'm pretty sure they know anyway', cross-reference available to 'I love Raph, but he's kind of a dick' and 'How many more broomsticks can Leo shove up his ass today') could be a bit of a challenge sometimes.

"Mikey. That's the fifth time you've hit yourself with your own 'chucks. Is there anything you want to tell me?"

"You distracted me..."

And there it was, that spark of truth Donatello didn't see too often, running between his eyes and under his skin. He thought a moment.

"Something...recently...caused you to be distracted?"

That made two of them. Mikey was giving him an uncomfortable look and Donatello tried to change tack. This was a little bit more difficult. Don often approached conversation the same way he approached the tougher sections of theoretical calculus. Just start rearranging variables and something will work, eventually. To his surprise, this appeared to be working already. His brother was doing a wonderful impression of a caged ocelot (yet another interesting weekend they'd promised never to discuss) and stammering.

"...no."

"Mikey, you are, quite possibly, the worst liar in existence."

"Nuh-UH! ...Leo's way worse."

"Don't be ridiculous. Leo never lies. It'd cause him to self-destruct. What the hell is going on with you? You were a mess in practice this morning, you've only eaten one sandwich all day-"

"Oh, so it's a crime now to not eat 'like a PMSing hippopotomus'?"

Donatello acknowledged this.

"Granted, not the nicest thing I've ever said. But Mikey, it's four in the afternoon."

"So?!"

"We got up for training at four this morning."

Donnie had a pretty good point there. Mikey had this problem from time to time, the not wanting to eat, but it was rare and generally induced by severe and highly specific levels of stress, and so clearly not normal for him (the hippopotomus comment largely irritated him because it was true).

"What's wrong, bro?"

Mikey's skin darkened in the general area of his cheeks. Donatello squinted a moment.

"What'd you-?"

"I...IaccidentallywalkedintoGeneva'sroomwhileshewa schanging..."

The words came out as an avalanche, or an attack, hard to tell which.

"Wait, what?"

Mikey collapsed under his confession, giving up on their sparring session completely and collapsing into a version of his post-videogame-victory-paralysis. It was a position he'd found himself in quite a few times since last week. It was easy to ignore it when Geneva was actually around, then he could see her, in real people clothes, and it was all good. But when she was gone the pictures in his head would commit their own treachery. He'd tried to simply see her in that teal dress, the one that went past her knees... and it'd turned into a teal bikini...

"I knocked on the door, and she was kinda...distracted, I guess, she wasn't thinking. You know how she's been out to lunch for a while... well, she said to come in, and I did... and she was in her underwear..."

Donatello sighed, exasperated. That was it? Seriously? It was like his brother was 15 again.

"Mikey, you're 27 years old, give or take our tank-hood and you're having a mental breakdown over a half-naked woman? Haven't you ever watched porn, or anything?"

Mikey's hands came down from where they'd been covering his eyes, expression reproachful.

"Um, no dude. That's gross. I'm a romantic...which used to be charming and adorable until now... now that I've seen a real girl in her underwear..."

"Oh, come on, Mikey! It's underwear! You've seen girls in bikinis!"

Mikey shook his head, distraught, vehemence in every laugh line.

"No, dude. It's not the same thing, and you know it...and it was..."

Wonderwoman underwear. And he kept thinking about those dimples at the base of her back. Of how she had no sharp edges, no gaunt shadows. Just...soft.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The long run post-session had been tough, but Raph would never mind the way training cleared his mind and let him push all of himself through every muscle, every pump of his heart. He and Leo had separated before too long and agreed on a meeting point a good two miles out. Now, on the way home through the tunnels he let every nerve sing with incoming oxygen and endorphins.

The city was getting quieter. Maybe. Maybe it was his imagination, but there was something about the number and variation of siren wails, fewer screams, gunshots now conspicuously absent where they'd been almost hard to hear before, for frequency, or proximity, he was never sure.

The people looked different too. He'd mentioned it to Leo, glad for the millionth time for the way they saw each other nowadays, respect and mutual strength. Now he could confess something like 'I was watching the humans' and not be worried for his pride or reputation, worried that Leo'd think he was weak for wondering what on earth they got up to all the way down there (or up there) on street level.

And nowadays Leo listened.

"What do you mean?"

That was the difficult bit to explain. Raph scratched the back of his head as he thought.

"There were clumps of 'em. Women. A lot of 'em. They don't look..."

He wondered how to explain.

"They don't look like hookers, you know? Just girls, everywhere."

Leo had bit back a joke about Raph's tendency to see what he wanted. He thought.

"You're right...that is weird."

* * *

><p><strong>Aaaaaaand then you all reviewed! Don't be that guy... don't read and not review. I'm watching... <strong>


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